You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 78. Andrea Heinz.mp4
00:00 Andrea Heinz Really, if you can think of a man, they are the typical sex buyer. And that's really, I think, what we need to debunk with people is that there is some specific type of sex buyer, some sort of criteria. And I would say the only criteria usually with these men is that they share the commonality of thinking that they are entitled to access marginalized women's bodies because they have money and resources. Someone once said, the sex buyer is the everyman. You can't pick them out in any kind of way because it is just infiltrated our society so deeply that it's men of all walks of life that are accessing and being consumers of commercial sex industries.

00:40 Stephanie Winn You must be some kind of therapist. Today I am speaking with Andrea Heinz. This episode is sort of a follow-up on episode 71, Sex Work or Slavery? Myths vs. Facts of Modern Prostitution with Michelle Kelly. In Michelle's story, she was a survivor of sex trafficking in the UK. Andrea has a different story. She is in Canada and had a different route into and out of the sex industry. Andrea has exited from the commercial sex industry and is now an advocate for the Nordic model, which criminalizes the buying but not the selling of sex. She's also the program coordinator for the Edmonton Sex Trade Offender Program and the executive producer of the docuseries labeled an eight-episode docuseries with gorilla motion pictures. She's active on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Heinz Site 2020. She's also a married mom of three and currently co-authoring a book scheduled to be done hopefully by the end of the year about this issue. In addition to that, Andrea has authored two academic peer-reviewed journal articles on the sex industry. One is called On Exiting from Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Insights from Sex Trade Experienced Persons. The other is A Mule for the Patriarchy, Waking Up to the Harms of Prostitution on Wives and Families. Andrea has been doing tremendous advocacy, raising awareness about the ways that the sex industry affects women and also ways that men can be rehabilitated as well. I'm grateful for her optimistic and compassionate perspective. Thank you for joining me today, Andrea.

02:18 Andrea Heinz Thank you. Thank you for having me, Stephanie. I've loved taking in some of your episodes, and it's an honor to be here with you today.

02:25 Stephanie Winn Likewise, I took in your story with Paul Laverne, which you shared on his YouTube channel. Prior to that, I had only been following you online. The first thing that struck me about you is, wow, she's cheery. She seems so bright and optimistic and well-adjusted. We might have to pick your brain at some point about sort of how you have found that resilience after the things that you've been through. So just to kind of recap your story, you entered the sex industry when you were 22 years old. At the time, you thought it was a combination of poverty and brainwashing that led you into it, poverty being from maybe bad relationship decisions, we could say, that you had some boyfriends who were very financially exploitative and that put you in a difficult position where you felt desperate for money. Combined with that, cultural messaging about sex work is work and this is great and look how much money you can make in a day. You were 29 when you finally left, and by then you had worked in several different brothels. You had owned a brothel and taken up being a dominatrix. This December, it'll be 11 years since you've left. So all of that is your background, and I just kind of wanted to quickly recap that for our listeners. Gosh, where should we start? We have so much to talk about today. Maybe we'll – let's start in the present. So you now help rehabilitate men. So can you explain how this sex trade sex trade offender program works?

03:58 Andrea Heinz Sure. Yes. Well, the hope is always rehabilitation for men. And I think that that has to be the cornerstone to any so-called John's school, if we if we want to call it that, as it's commonly referred to. I think that you have to have the belief that men are inherently good by nature, that they are empathetic to women's safety and equality, and that they are open to being educated and informed. And I think very similar to sellers who end up in the commercial sex industry, sex buyers are also subjected to a lot of the cultural narratives and brainwashing that leads many of them into believing that this is a victimless activity and that it is completely consensual. and that, you know, there's just no harm, no foul. So I've been involved with our sex trade offender program here in Edmonton, Alberta for the last 10 years as a speaker. And that program is ran by the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation here in the city, a wonderful organization that was created in the mid 1990s to address rampant street exploitation. that was happening and at the time they did a count and there was about 250 minors that were being exploited on our streets here in Edmonton as well. So there was a big spotlight being shone on everything that was happening and the solution a lot of people felt, a lot of stakeholders and police partners and NGOs, concerned citizens, they all felt that the answer was to give men a chance to right their wrongs and to see the fallacy in these arguments that are being put forth that sex work is work. And that's been really happening strongly since the 1980s, this tidal wave of labor analysis put upon sexual exploitation. So the program was created basically to try to stop a lot of the public nuisance that was occurring as a result of men trolling our inner city neighborhoods, targeting women who were experiencing homelessness, women who were being pimped, women who were experiencing drug addiction, all of these problems that have this ripple effect into our larger community. So what happens is the men would be arrested in a street operation. Now it's moved into hotel operations and indoor operations, but back then it was just street. They would have a undercover police officer that would be posing as someone selling sex, and they would arrest the man. And then the man would be given an opportunity to attend an alternative measures program, where it's eight hours of education, survivor testimonials, testimonials of family members who have lost children to murder, suicide, anything related to prostitution. And this would allow the men to have basically a chance to not have a criminal record. So it leads to a stay of charges for one year, wherein if the men do not re-offend in that one year time period, then the charge is removed from their record. If they re-offend again, then it's go straight to the judge, go right to court. They don't get a second opportunity. And there's also eligibility criteria that they must meet as well. So if men have any acts of any history of violence against women or children, then they are automatically ineligible for the program. or if they have already attended the program, then they are not able to take it again. So it's a very good program that I feel is important. I think every community should have a sex trade offender program that gives these men this opportunity to hear the truth, because we know that oftentimes people who are selling sex are pushing a narrative that appeases the sex buyer and his conscience, that he's not using his money and his resources to bypass somebody's authentic sexual consent. So I'm a very strong proponent, proponent of the program. And after 10 years, I've recently been invited to take over the program as the lead and have already done a program, you know, speaking with the men as the lead. And it's, it's just so rewarding. It's powerful. And it's very, gives me a lot of optimism and hope that, you know, men can change when they actually are given the truth.

08:14 Stephanie Winn Again, I'm so impressed by your optimism and how you led that with the importance of believing that these men can change, that their eyes can be opened. And I think that says a lot about the way that you were able to maintain access to humanity even while in the sex trade, even while badly dissociating. You paint a very human picture of the men that you worked with. You said most of them are not narcissists or sociopaths. It doesn't mean that what they're doing is okay. If anything, you've identified that the common theme with them is denial that there's something wrong with what they're doing. But I want to play devil's advocate for a moment here. And present a different position, which is, why should a woman like you who's been through what you've been through spend any more time catering to men? Why shouldn't you focus your efforts on helping women who've left the sex trade?

09:17 Andrea Heinz I get that question a lot. I wouldn't call it a criticism because I think it's a valid question. For me, I find that I feel like I make a bigger impact not only on an individual micro level with men rather than women, given the influence of the money and the economic destitution that so many women are presently under when they're active in the sex industry. But also, I just I feel that men deserve the truth. And I would never say that a woman is obligated to work with men to give them any emotional labor, to give them any insights into their own trauma or experiences or anything like that. But for me, I found it is very cathartic to be able to look these men in the eye. And even though well, I shouldn't say all the men that come through the sex trade offender program were not buyers of mine because I have had a man who did come through the program that was one of my so-called clients before, but the majority are not. And so there's something very freeing and very cathartic, like I said, about being able to look them in the eye and just be completely honest and not have to put on this facade of enjoyment and desire and everything I had to do for so many years in order to get that money because I was economically destitute. So for me, it's actually a healing gift. And I feel like if someone is able to share those insights with the men, it's a gift that they are choosing to give them as well. And again, I would not expect anyone to do that. But for me, I think it's been the right decision.

10:54 Stephanie Winn Now I'm seeing it from a different angle, like that must be actually part of why you seem so well off. emotionally, right? And I know I'm sure there's probably still some dissociation that you're working through in therapy, but that you have been healing yourself through this process of taking your power back, taking your voice back, putting yourself not back in the same exact situation, but in an adjacent or corollary situation that actually gives you a chance to make things right, that actually gives you a chance to do what maybe you wish you could have done all along, which is to have an authentic, truthful, empowered human relationship with people. And that's not at all what I imagined you were going to say. What I imagined you were going to say in response to my devil's advocate question was something like that this gets at the root of the problem, right? That women wouldn't be traumatized by these experiences if there weren't men pursuing them. So that this is a way of helping everyone. But that is.

11:59 Andrea Heinz I think it is. I think that that's completely spot on as well, too. So I think everything has a ripple effect in this area. And I know that me previously pushing sex work ideology and that narrative had those negative social repercussions. And I know that there were women who left that mindset before I did. and then who bore witness to me continuing to push that narrative and did feel victimized by me and not seen or heard by me. And so, you know, in so many ways, I think it's also speaking up on behalf of women. And and I never try to say I speak for all women, because I do know that there are women, a very, very small subset of women that claim to choose sexual exploitation as their career and say that they enjoy it and that they don't have histories of trauma and You know that they would choose it over anything else and so again we can't speak for everyone but I, I do know that there's so few of us that speak out publicly about the harms and the sadness and the trauma and the regret and just the toxicity of the entire prostitution system. that I get countless messages from women who just say, you know, thank you, like, just thank you for even just talking about this, because it just takes one person to speak about it. And then you'll start seeing other people just, you know, adding their two cents and putting an elaborative comment to something. And it just gets a conversation going. And really, I think that that's the core of everything is that we're just not having broad conversations. And the conversations that we're having are not fair in their representation. It is very, very heavily stacked against women in prostitution, that they choose it, they like it, that they're exploiting the men that, you know, just X, Y, Z, right? Everything that is always putting the focus on the women and the men are just these anonymous people in the background. And it's almost as if the harm that happens to these women is like just happening miraculously because we're not highlighting these people and there's just this cloak of secrecy that really protects all sexual offenders but also including men who purchase sex because people don't think that they are sexual offenders they think that they're just some subset of very lonely very sad men and and many of them are but there is predation at hand and there is exploitation at hand no matter how nice they are no matter how well they tip us no matter any of those things, they still deserve to have that light shone on them, I feel. So it's an honour for me to be able to speak for those women that don't feel like they can speak up because we see how readily they're abused and cancelled and dismissed and everything else. And it's hard to watch that as a woman and as a feminist.

14:47 Stephanie Winn When you talk about the predation, I'm reminded of a point in your interview with Paul Laverne that was counterintuitive for me and I think would be for a lot of people, where you said that young men were your least favorite customers. I think naive observers without experience in the sex industry would think, well, at least younger people are more attractive and less smelly or whatever. But the way that you were treated by young men with high libidos, young men who I'm guessing from the sound of your story, could well have had girlfriends, but chose to hire prostitutes because of that power component, because of what, you know, the fact that money is being exchanged just gave them free reign to be as abusive as they wanted to be. You ended up hating working with that population and trying to avoid them as much as possible. So you've really experienced kind of the gamut of all these different sex fires, ranging from those who were not doing it because they couldn't possibly date a real woman, men who were married, men who were abusive or wanted to play out some fantasy, men who are porn sick, all the way to those who were, you know, the ones that I think the sex work is work narrative wants you to believe are like, they're just these poor, you know, disabled, or they're widowed, or, like, you've you've seen the whole range. Is that right?

16:25 Andrea Heinz Absolutely. I have had men from age 18 to 93 purchase sex from me. I've seen disabled men. I've seen men of all ethnicities, races, all backgrounds, professionally, right down to men living in poverty themselves. Really, if you can think of a man, they are the typical sex buyer. And that's really, I think what we need to debunk with people is that there is some specific type of sex buyer, some sort of criteria. And I would say the only criteria usually with these men is that they share the commonality of thinking that they are entitled to access marginalized women's bodies because they have money and resources. But I can't remember who said it, but someone once said the sex buyer is the everyman because you can't pick them out in any kind of way because it is just infiltrated our society so deeply that it's men of all walks of life that are accessing and being consumers of commercial sex industries. So yeah, men under 30, I think I only sold sex to them for probably a year, maybe a year and a half. And after that, I couldn't do it. I would put right on my website and then all my advertisements, you know, I will only stay with those over 30. And if it came down to it and me having to choose a man who was 25 versus 80, I would have chosen the man who was 80 every single time. And like you said, it's it's odd, I think, when people hear that, because they think like that's like your grandfather. It's that sort of vibe when they're touching you. It's it's like being molested. And I've heard women say that to me directly. I've seen that and I felt that. But the difference, I think, was is just that I don't know if it's porn and just the rampant growth of the violence within pornography that has happened in the last few decades. But the younger men were far far more violent, they were far more disrespectful, cold hearted. A lot of the older men, even though they looked at you as lesser than, they at least put on this really good phony show that they cared about you as a person and that they respected you to some degree. a lot of them still didn't respect boundaries. But you know, in verbal senses, they would say more polite things or would just be a little bit more pleasant to spend time around, whereas the younger men were just utterly misogynistic. And it was just very hard inside to experience that because you're already being physically, sexually exploited and harmed, but then to have that added layer of dehumanization and disregard for your feelings and your thoughts and who you are as a person, it made it near unbearable to the point that, you know, we were, and I say we because I know this was many of us, we were developing suicide ideation. Some women were developing drug habits, you know, to try to numb out and, you know, disregard the impact that that naturally would have on us. It just became so terrible. And so a lot of times these younger guys would say things like, oh, I'm young, I'm hot. Why won't you choose me? I hit the gym. And I would just always tell them it was because I was worried about crossing paths with someone in my age demographic. But it was all a lie that I said that. And it was strictly just on how they treated me and how they treated women in general.

19:50 Stephanie Winn I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8 Sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. I'm thinking about the implications of that for all women of that generation, if these are the young men who constitute their dating pool. I have heard some really disturbing stories as a therapist of young women having their first sexual or romantic encounter, sometimes even their first kiss, and boys acting out this porn-sick mentality, you know, boys choking girls, attempting to choke girls on their first kiss even, just horrific stuff that fits right in with thinking about that generational difference because, as you're saying, a man in his 80s or 90s grew up during a time when men were expected to be chivalrous. So at least there's the pretend show of how are you doing, young lady, rather than the sort of hookup culture. And I really feel for not only women in the industry, but women who, you know, that's their dating pool. And what is that doing to their self-esteem and their hope for the future, their expectations in a partner? But let's talk about actually the legal status of prostitution in Canada because it's changed from when you were in the industry and it's – there are people trying to change it again and that's actually part of why you're writing a book. So can you fill us in on that?

22:10 Andrea Heinz Yeah, so we could do probably like a two or three hour podcast conversation about that alone, because it has been an ongoing battle between feminists and those who wish to see an expansion of the commercial sex industry in Canada. So very, very tiring and frustrating because it takes us away from the good work that we could all collectively be doing around our shared common goal, which is safety for women. But unfortunately, we see different routes towards that shared goal. So when I was in the industry, the actual physical act of selling sex, or sorry, buying sex was not illegal. What was illegal was everything around that. And that's quite common in several countries where, you know, owning a brothel is illegal, enticing someone into becoming a sex seller, so procurement, that's illegal. Living off the avails or taking their money, that's illegal. But the individuals who are active in the sex industry and wish to see expansion of it didn't like that and they wanted full decriminalization. So complete open market policies, no laws on the books whatsoever with anything to do around the commercial sex trade. And their argument for that is that we already have a very robust criminal code of Canada that covers things like assault, you know, trafficking, and so therefore we don't need laws specified around commercial sexual exploitation, we can just use any offenses through our current laws that we have in place. But those of us who see it otherwise believe that there is an innate harm that comes with the objectification of women and the usage of them through prostitution. That we do need laws that are tailored to that because a lot of these other laws don't really specify the nature of one-sided, non-mutual prostitution, essentially. So that was the law, again, whenever I was active was, you know, the act of buying sex was not illegal, everything around it was. Then there was a push, it was called the Bedford trial, so anyone can look it up. And we got a decision of that in 2013. And that struck down solicitation, that struck down the common body house, and it also struck down living off the avails. And there, in fairness, there was some warranted decisions that were tied to that. So, for example, living off the avails under our old laws, if it was a minor child or like a non-exploitative romantic partner, an elderly parent, somebody like that who had been living with an individual selling sex, then under our old laws, they could be found to be exploiting or garnering a material benefit from someone who was in the commercial sex industry. So obviously nobody wants to see that happen. Nobody should be criminalized because of their affiliation, their non-exploitative affiliation with a sex seller. So I do believe that, you know, Bedford had its good components to the decision. But after that came into effect, Parliament was, or sorry, after it was struck down, Parliament was given a one-year term to rewrite a new law, or we would have de facto decrim, because we would have no laws on our books. So Parliament did take one year and then came back with our current law that we've now had in place since 2014, which is the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. And that's our Nordic model style law that criminalizes the purchase of demand, but makes exempt from prosecution the sale of sex. This was a huge feminist win, obviously, because it then recognizes that using money and resources to coerce someone into sex is an act of sexualized violence, one that disproportionately impacts socially marginalized individuals, particularly our indigenous population here in Canada. And we have a very large database of missing and murdered Indigenous women and boys as well to young Indigenous men. So then we got this law, we were all cheering, everything was great. But the sad part is that we never saw any political will to implement any of it to go after the demand and start arresting men on a larger scale. And we saw no social will to back the law because everybody in Canada is very liberal to a fault and believes that sex work is work. They're lacking a critical analysis and they understandably do so because they're not getting the counter narrative given to them. We're not seeing it discussed. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to publish work or share a reverse op-ed in a paper and I'm denied. So, a lot of our mainstream media is captured by this woke ideology. And so of course there's a strong lean to not enforcing our law. So we've had this law almost 10 years now and we've had only very small pockets within Canada, where people are actually enforcing the law where there's police forces that are actually going after the demand. But it's just a small, small drop in the bucket. We need a larger social movement. So presently, right now, it's working its way up through the courts, once again, as a charter challenge, our new law here. But we had a huge win right before I jumped online with you. I was just doing the happy dance because we did just get news today, just a couple hours ago, that an Ontario Superior Court judge did rule that the laws are, in fact, constitutional. So again, that's the outcome of a lot of hard work based upon feminist study, advocates coming forth, survivors sharing their stories. It's very powerful that once you do hear the truth, it's hard to sit in these places of denial or justification for this very exploitative system. So yeah, we'll see where it goes from here. I don't doubt that now the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform is going to challenge, or sorry, appeal this decision, which means that the next step will be that it will go to the Supreme Court of Canada. So a lot of people are a little bit scared about that, but I'm very confident that, you know, when the information is brought forth and the law is looked at in how it's drafted, it will be found constitutional and then we have it cemented. Then it's there and we can't take it away from women.

28:43 Stephanie Winn And this is also part of why you're writing the book to help create resources so that as many people as possible who might have some kind of stake in this debate are educated.

28:56 Andrea Heinz Absolutely, because I have found that aside from the very, very deeply captured individuals, most people, including politicians that I have met with on one-on-one basis, they are open to hearing the counter narrative. And when you can debunk a lot of what they have been told and bought into to date, a lot of them do drop that mindset and they say, oh my gosh, I never looked at it through that lens. And that's just the case that that's a lot of feminist policy, right? It's not popular. People think that feminists are angry, anti-man, that we just hate everybody and everything, and that we only see the view of women. But I think that this is understanding that men are hurting themselves as well, that they are buying into this fake intimacy and that they are looking for something that they are missing in their lives, and they're looking for it in the wrong place. And when it's not being fulfilled in a genuine capacity for them, then they're getting even more distraught, even more upset. It's really not helping fix men in any kind of way to allow them to use their money to buy fake intimacy. you know, it doesn't fill that void. It's just a bandaid solution. And so you know, this is a gift to men as well to stop them from being caught up in these churning cycles of, of the sex industry.

30:20 Stephanie Winn Far from the angry feminist that hates men. I think it's impressive considering everything you've been through how little you hate men.

30:26 Andrea Heinz I get that all the time. People are like if you of all people should hate them. And I say I can't because I've seen them at their most open and intimate way. And I truly think that if I would have told these men the truth in the moment, and been able to do that, that I don't think that they would have been able to go through with the act of of using me for sexual gratification. I mean, some, of course, would because sex addiction is is high, highly rampant in that population of sex buyers. But I think a lot of them, like I said, are just on this like path of autopilot where there's just not been something that kind of jolts them, you know, and makes them kind of wake up to examining it a little bit further. They're just, oh, sex work is work. You know, it seems palatable. It seems happy. I'll just go with that. And it takes a lot for them to be introspective and to ask themselves those questions, because in doing so, they will have to face the fact that they are, you know, a de facto gentle rapist. They're using their money to not get sexual consent that is freely given. They are circumventing sexual consent. they're getting compliance rather than consent. So a lot of people, I think, cannot face the harm that they have caused to other people because they cannot live with themselves if they were truly honest with themselves. And we've all harmed people. Anybody who has had any type of involvement in prostitution on either side, whether they intended to or not, and this even includes trafficked women. You know, they're not at fault for the harm that has happened to the men. The men are the ones that choose to engage the commercial sex industry and have that choice to not, whereas trafficked women don't. But, you know, trafficked women are similar to sex sellers in that we all have to sell a lie to men. We all have to. And again, I'm not faulting women in any capacity for doing that. We have to do it in order to get that money. Because again, I truly believe if these men knew the truth, they wouldn't act in that manner.

32:30 Stephanie Winn So there's a parallel process playing out between the women selling sex and the men buying it, where as women to survive that work, you have to kind of dissociate and become the lie, which then later poses a challenge to regaining a sense of what your own authentic emotions and desires and sensations are. And then for the men, they're diluting themselves into thinking that this is all fine and dandy. You even posted online I think right before we got on this call, a screenshot of a man that you had reason to suspect was probably a previous buyer of yours saying some creepy and delusional things about basically how men can honestly fall in love with the women that they're buying sex from and don't you understand what you do to them emotionally. So while you as a woman are sort of deluding yourself and disassociating with yourself in order to create this illusion for someone else in order for you to survive, The men are also deluding themselves and it's bringing them further and further away from empathy, from honest relationships, honest self-reflection. So what's happening to the men as their thoughts are becoming distorted? Because it seems like you have some really good insights there and I just want to invite you to go deeper into that.

34:07 Andrea Heinz you know, people always think that it comes down to just the orgasm. And that's really what is driving men. But it's not I think what it is, is that there's this growing divide between men and women, about our respect for one another, about our honesty and transparency with one another. And about, you know, just how we are willing to collaborate with the other. And so I struggle with that when people say like, you hate men, you're anti men, because Really, if I was anti-men, I'd still be lying to them. I'd be deceiving them. I'd be using them just as I was before. And, you know, a lot of people want to absolve me of having done that, saying, well, you were in poverty, you didn't have a choice. And I didn't. That is fair to say. But it doesn't take away the fact that anyone who is selling sex is, like you said, having to feed this lie to these men. And I didn't feel good about myself. And it reached a point where you know, I just felt like I was, you know, again, just a liar and just this phony version of myself. And that was so traumatic for me, because, you know, more than anything, you have to be feeling as though you are your true self. And when you start to deviate away from that, that's where you experience this internal conflict of who am I? What do I stand for? What's important to me? Like, how do I view myself in this larger collective of humanity? And so, you know, I have a hard time even just forgiving myself for having done that. And yes, I felt privy to the brainwashing and that's how I landed there. But did I have a choice when I was in there to do anything differently? And I didn't. So that also then leads into trying to lie to ourselves to keep reassuring that that, you know, hey, you're not a bad person. You're not hurting people. You're a victim here. And I just couldn't keep doing that. to any capacity any longer it was just causing me this this rift within my authentic self and how how others were viewing me and it was just I don't know what more to say about it but it was just very very traumatic and self-damaging and I hated myself. There's no other way to put it than I absolutely hated who I was when I was selling sex, even though that's probably the time that I had more money than I've ever had in my life. I had more attention, more accolades, more everything, but it wasn't authentic. And so at the end of the day, it meant nothing. You go home and every time that you lay your head down on your bed and your pillow, you know that you've had to have sex and lied to many men to get that money to buy that bed. Every time I'd put on a sweater or a jacket, oh, this cost me lying to two men in order to buy this jacket. It was just interwoven in my entire sense of being. that I couldn't separate my alter ego and this lying version of myself versus who I feel I actually am at my core. So then it was like, OK, got to make this decision, you know, go back and live in in the very basic means. And, you know, thankfully, I was able to clear my debt. I didn't leave the industry with piles of money to any capacity like people think that we do. But I left with, you know, the understanding that I was making the right decision and that I was no longer going to be lying to myself or to men.

37:21 Stephanie Winn You had to put on an act and repress certain emotions, present emotions you weren't really feeling for your customers to be satisfied. And in the process, while you're putting on an act, you're also experiencing things viscerally to your body. So then your brain is wiring together, making it in the body. I am an actor. this illusion I'm putting on at the end of the day, it's very understandable to feel like you don't know who you are.

37:55 Andrea Heinz And then, you know, couple that with men saying you're a whore, you're a slut, you're this, you're that. So when you don't even know who you are and now you have this external messaging being put upon you that you are all these other things, that's really what you start to believe, you know. And I sold sex over 4,300 times in a seven year period. And so every day I had a man telling me, you know, oh, you're just a dirty little slut, aren't you? Oh, you're a whore. Hey, you're a good little whore. Good little girl. Lots of creepy stuff. And, you know, you try to then leave and go and rebuild what you've damaged within yourself that day by doing things that are true to who you actually are. But all those things that are true to who you are, like your friends, your family, the things that you enjoy doing, you naturally have created distance from because a lot of your true life or your former life doesn't bode with, you know, being in the commercial sex industry. Like I lost all my friends for the most part while I was in prostitution because I had to adopt this alter ego and playing that role almost every day for hours and hours every day really started to stick with me. And so then you start to believe that you're these things. You start to act as though you're these things. And then people say, well, you know, they're not the same person. They've changed. And they start creating that distance. I, you know, lost a lot of the close bond that I had with my family, I'm only now 10 years, 11 years later here, almost back to having rebuilt that with my parents with my sister. So there's just like weird floating kind of essence. to having been in the commercial sex industry where you don't know who you are, the old you is no longer who you are, and there's this external voice from all these random men who are using you telling you that you're something lesser than. And even whenever they would say, oh, you're beautiful, oh, you're lovely, oh, you're this, you're that, the fact that men pay to have sex and then essentially discard the woman after completely invalidates anything nice that they say to you. So when you go home at night, you don't feel like those men actually do care. You feel like they used you and that they just said what they needed to say to make it not so awkward and uncomfortable that they were using you. So it takes a lot of time, it's taken me a lot of therapy, a lot of somatic therapy just to feel okay in my body again, to not feel like I'm floating all the time, that I'm a liar even to this day in everything I do. There's this horrible feeling that even when you exit the industry that you're never a good person. Even whenever you feel like, okay, I've reached out to all the people that I know I've wronged. I've apologized to them. I've denounced my old behavior. I've taken measures to be proactive in helping this not happen to other people. You know, I've done X, Y, Z. You do everything that you can, but at the end of the day, your self-esteem is so battered and the trauma is always there speaking in your ear. And then the people that want to keep the industry going because they're profiting from it, either sexually or monetarily, they're they're, you know, chiming in and telling you, oh, you're a hypocrite. Oh, you're trash. You're just a whore. That's all you ever were. That's all you'll ever be. It's very, very hard to to, you know, walk and feel as a whole person with your head held high in any regard after you've gone through that. And and I think that's very similar to any type of sexual abuse, too. You know, I've heard the same with a lot of survivors of childhood sexual abuse, that there's just this feeling that you're always a bad person. And so, you know, when people say like to me, oh, you're doing this for attention or you're doing this, you know, to absolve yourself of the guilt. It's like that. That's not what it's about in any kind of way. And that really hurts that people say that rather than just believing that I actually had a change of my mindset and that I just wanted to be a better person, a more ethical person to my fellow human beings.

41:52 Stephanie Winn You say it's taken a lot of therapy, and that somatic therapy has been really helpful. And you wrote a paper on this. You said, before we started recording, that in your paper on exiting from commercial sexual exploitation, insights from sex trade experienced persons, that there was a bell curve that showed the points of optimal intervention. for, as you said, quasi-anonymous sex sellers. I had to write all that down. So what have been your insights both from your own personal therapy as well as from the research that you've done and the academic papers that you've written on what's helpful or not helpful in therapy for women who are either currently in the industry, thinking about leaving the industry, have left the industry?

42:37 Andrea Heinz Yeah, that's again another such loaded question that it's, I won't do it justice in my response, so I'll just put that disclaimer out now. But for me, I was really, really struggling still with suicide ideation. I still struggle with that to this day. It just comes in these waves where nothing will spark it. It'll just be this like body feeling of just not being present in myself and floating. That's always the word I use to describe it because it's the only way I feel I can is this floating outer body experience and kind of observing life rather than actually living life and experiencing emotions. So, you know, for many years, my friends and fellow activists have said, like, you should really go into therapy, like, stop using activism as therapy. Because even though it's cathartic and therapeutic to speak your truth and say these things, you're still not healing, like, your inner child or, you know, any of these previous versions of you that are still within you. You have to go to actual therapy. And I've never really been a strong believer in therapy, because I'm like, okay, they're just gonna, you know, speak back to me what I just said, and then ask me how that makes me feel. And okay, you know, like, do some introspection. Which again, it's wonderful for many people, but I think when you have been in your head as much as so many sex sellers have, You have overanalyzed your situation. You have looked at it from every single angle. You have gone into it so deep in an obsessive type way that it's really hard to believe that anyone can say anything to you or pose any type of narrative that you have not looked at yourself when examining your past or who you are, who you were. But either way, I was like, okay, I probably should go do this. You know, I'm married and there was a lot of challenges, I think, with emotional connection with myself and my husband, my children even, where there's just always this space between how much I was able to give of myself. And so I want to be the best wife I can be. I want to be the best mother I can be. And so I did start taking therapy and You know, when you have, I think, such a long history in prostitution, so many things have happened and there's so much depth to all of it, so much complexity that even just to fill in a therapist on everything so that they can fully understand what you've experienced, that takes, I would say, about a year of talk therapy. of just being like, this is what happened and then this happened. And then, you know, it's a lot to unpack because things move very quickly in the industry and there's all these things being thrown at you and it's mayhem. You're in a state of crisis. So I did a year of talk therapy and my therapist said to me, you keep on going back into this mental compartmentalization of things and this mental examination and always reverting back to how the industry impacts other women. But when I tried to come to you and say, how did you feel about that? Or when that happened to you and not as a large hold to women, how did that make you feel? She said, every time I do that, you shut me down. And it's very clear that you struggle with feeling and expressing emotions and just sitting with those feelings. And so she said, I really think that you should try somatic therapy. And so we did this thing where, and it was so crazy, I tell everybody about it because I'm like, you have to go do it because it really gave me more in one session than I'd had in a year of just talking. So she said to me, I want you to imagine the pain and the trauma and everything and describe what that is like physically to me. And I said, it feels like there's this little gremlin in my body and he's like cranking this wheel within me and it's pulling down everything in my body. And you probably heard about this in Paul's conversation with me where I talked about it. And I said, it's like, he's just turning this wheel and it's just squeezing my body. And then she said, I want you to envision that the spool and the wheel itself breaks. And now it's just freely spinning and everything is released. And when she told me to do that, it was, I just started sobbing. It was just this massive release of physical pain. And I was not expecting it. I didn't know that that was going to happen. It was just wild what it did. And I probably sobbed for several minutes straight. And then after I was like, Oh my God. Okay. That was crazy. Like that was not expected. And she said, that's what we call a trauma bleed. She said, that's when it just, pours out. And so she said, you know, one and done is not reasonable when that happens. This takes a lot of, you know, touching on each of the individual harms and bad experiences that you've had. But when you break that spool and it just freely spins and everything gets released, that's, you know, some type of freedom that's happening, like you're letting that go. And so I think that it's important to talk about it if you need to, which is where I get that freedom speaking to sex buyers or just tweeting about my experiences to tell people like, this is the truth. But there's also that component where, you know, trauma lives in the body and you have to work that out physically. And, you know, I love to run, I do marathons and I'm a distance runner and You know, that has helped subside it in me, but it never freed it out of me. And when we did that session and it freed it out of me, it was just so encouraging that, you know, there is hope and that there's progress that can be made when you just go about it the right way and have patience with yourself that, you know, it may not happen every time, but when you start digging into these things, eventually they will be released and hopefully healed for a lot of people.

48:40 Stephanie Winn It's so powerful that you and your therapist were able to find that exact right way of touching on it and feeling into it and putting words to it that unlocked those floodgates for you.

48:55 Andrea Heinz Yeah. I'm very grateful for her. She's a remarkable woman and she specializes with working with women who have experienced sexual violation either, you know, within prostitution or without. And so that was nice too. I think that that's a very important thing is finding the right therapist. because a lot of people don't have a very in-depth understanding of prostitution. They have that surface level, you know, perception of it, like the masses do. So it does take a long time to really look at it from all angles. And, you know, that's where I try to have patience with people too, that come at me with these very elementary arguments. And I just say to myself, they haven't seen enough. They haven't heard enough because eventually when you do, it just all comes back to the human experience. And, you know, people say, keep your ethics out of it. You know, this is just all about laws and safety and structure and It's not. It's about who we are as humans and how we view one another and how we treat each other. And, you know, morals are coded into law everywhere. We don't kill people because it is morally wrong to kill people. You know, all of these things, every law to some degree has morals tied to it. But for whatever reason, when we discuss prostitution, that's where we're shamed for even bringing up morals. You know, and, and like one of the groups Coyote out of America that really pushed and I think essentially embedded the term sex work, their acronym is Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. So for them, it's all about like, you know, Oh, don't tread on me. Don't hurt me. Like freedom, hyper individualism over the collective consciousness. And I just don't think that that's the right way for. humanity to move forward is looking at things in a hyper individualized sense. I think we are all interconnected, we are all broken off from source consciousness, we are all one. And if you view anyone as lesser than or, you know, different than you, in a larger sense, that's where we start to have these problems, like people exploiting other people for their own individual gain. So There's so much to it, and finding the right therapist is really important, but it's hard. There's not enough people that specialize in this arena.

51:12 Stephanie Winn If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at Organifi.com slash Some Therapist. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-S-I.com slash Some Therapist. And use code Some Therapist to take 20% off your order. What do you think about, or what would you say to, however you want to take this question, a therapist who endorses the narrative that sex work is work? A therapist who believes that the best way for them to be a good person and a good therapist is to adopt that worldview.

52:24 Andrea Heinz I've met therapists like that. I know that a lot of those therapists partner with the so-called sex work organizations to provide therapy to women who are active in the sex industry, but not challenge them in how they feel. And I don't want to take anything away from them because I think maybe, just maybe in that moment, someone just listening to them and affirming how they feel might be what that person needs when they're actively selling sex. Do I think it's ethical? Not necessarily. Do I think it's on point for the facts and the realities of the larger picture? Not at all. But my therapist, if a woman were to go to her and say, I choose to sell sex. I'm happy selling sex, but I'm struggling with some of the other issues in my life or some things that are related to selling sex. I know my therapist would not condemn that person. She would never say, I know better than you. And again, I try not to do that with experiential women, just as a peer myself, because I don't claim to know the experiences of all other women. And at one point I was very much of that position myself. I see it more as an evolution of understanding where a lot of people, again, have not, you know, really fully immersed themselves in this topic enough to really see the very many layers that exist to it. And there's so many layers to it that I think when we just say, well, if it's working for you, do your thing. Okay. It's very superficial. And again, that might be what someone needs in that moment is just someone to not judge them and to hear them out, but I just don't think that it's going to move them forward in their understanding of what is actually happening to them. And I talked to a lot of women in the commercial sex industry who still say, yeah, full decriminalization is the answer. Yes, I choose this and I'm happy. But then whenever you ask them, what do you need right in this moment? More than money ever. The very first thing every single woman tells me is I need therapy. I need counseling. So that tells me that a lot of these women are not ready to look at the possibility, or in my opinion, the likelihood that their participation in the sex industry is what is causing all of these other issues and is, well, maybe not causing them, but increasing them, amplifying them. So it's hard because you want people to be supported wherever they are at the stage of their journey, but it's hard to have patience with people in the evolution of their understanding of the journey. And so some people might say, well, that's just you determining that where you are is the end goal. But I truly believe that consciousness evolves. And I think that everything is a building block. I don't believe that consciousness can be regressive. I think once you have seen something, you cannot deny that it is real, that it has happened, it exists. So I think that a lot of times there is the denial, there is the self-rationalization, the self-justification, all of these things that people are not realistically able to drop when they are experiencing that abuse daily. They have to put on the game face. They have to feed themselves that lie as well as the man that lie, because that's what's going to spare them from suicide or addiction. and things like that. So I think it's important to have an empathetic ear for people wherever they are. But I do appreciate the therapists who gently challenge women in their position of saying it's also great.

55:57 Stephanie Winn Yeah, I struggle with the ethics of this question myself. It's been a few years since I have had a client who was in the industry. So it's not something that I currently have to think about in my practice. Although if there's anyone listening who is trying to exit the industry or has left and feels like I would be a good fit, I'd be happy to work with them. When you say that your therapist, who sounds wonderful, by the way, that she would say not condemn someone. Well, I wouldn't want any of my clients to feel condemned. That's a really strong word about any of their life choices. But what I struggle with, and I think it connects to other ethical issues that we're currently navigating in the field and that I'm routinely conversing with people about, is at what point do you have an obligation to provide your patients with accurate information about how things tend to work? So if you're a physician and your patient is a smoker, then you have an obligation to say, well, it's your body. Do what you want. I'm not condemning you. I'm not stopping you. But here are some facts you might need to know about how maintaining this habit is associated with an increased risk in all of these diseases. So as a psychotherapist, if a patient is coming saying, here are some life choices I'm making that I don't want you to question, I feel okay about these life choices, I just wanna work on this other thing over here that I think is unrelated, and I see a connection, you know, between what's going on over here and what's going on over there, there are times that it's important for me to have a conversation with my patient where I say, I'm not sure I can actually deliver the result that you're hoping for. Because it sounds like you are hoping to resolve this dilemma that you're having in this other area of your life or to be happy or contented with this, but you don't want to question or change this over here. I actually don't know of instances where a person can do that, where a person can maintain this set of behaviors over here and achieve this other happy result over here. And, you know, I've had that conversation with my patients about their expectations, like, you know, the expectation that you can, let's say, maintain agoraphobia and social isolation. I just want to stay inside and not have any friends and not go anywhere because it's scary out there in the world, but I want to feel happy and contented in my home. Well, you know, Maybe, but it's my understanding that the very same habits of mind and behavior that go along with your agoraphobia and social phobia and avoidance are going to reinforce your depression and anxiety and that addressing the social component, getting out there, having experiences and meeting people is probably going to be an important part of lifting your spirits just based on what I know about the human psyche, right? So I do think that we have to be realistic with our patients about their expectations, not to condemn or judge, but say, hmm, you want this without changing that? I'm not sure that I actually have the power to help you achieve that goal. I'm not sure if it's possible or realistic. And so I think, you know, about the hypothetical situation you described where a woman is like, I'm selling sex. This is my life choice. I'm content with it. I just want to You know, I'm just going to speculate about what other problems she might be having. I just want to address why I don't feel anything when my boyfriend tells me about his day. Hmm. I wonder if there's a connection there, right?

59:58 Andrea Heinz Exactly, like two and two should not make five. And unfortunately, we're just seeing this reluctance of people to challenge other people. You're seen as like, an enemy of someone if you tell them what you feel is the truth or things that you have observed or concluded based upon your observations. So it's very frustrating to hear your anti-woman, your anti-bodily autonomy, because we can't focus on the individual woman. We have to look at patterns and systems and how these influence on a larger scale. I don't doubt that there is a very small portion of women that really, truly enjoy selling sex. But again, if you are saying, I enjoy selling sex, I wouldn't choose anything else, this is great. But then you're having, you know, dissociation in your day, you're having a hard time getting sexually aroused with your partner, you're choosing, you know, toxic partners that are not good for your well being, your family and you are having problems like these are things that, you know, we have to stop and say, could that be related to this? Act of selling sex but you know academia has just been infiltrated by this sex work narrative And if you try to again challenge it or publish any type of work going against that You're condemned you are literally ostracized you're kicked out of programs like there's been you know individuals who have challenged people who have just been speakers of at Canadian institutions that are coming in and pushing sex work narrative. And they've been ostracized within their program and some of them even like gently removed because, you know, it's wrong think. So I just I struggle with that. I'm not trying to silence anyone who sells sex. I think everybody has a place to have that freedom to have free speech. I'm all for it. But I think that, you know, we have to have honesty as well. And with a lot of these things where people are making a lot of money, like a multi-billion dollar industry every year, there's going to be some gaslighting that happens with that. So if you have to be the enemy for naming the reality, you know, I'd rather be that than an enabler of abuse and an excuser of harm.

01:02:12 Stephanie Winn Well said. So in your paper, you identified points at which a therapist could potentially intervene. Can you describe what some of those points are and what would be an appropriate intervention?

01:02:25 Andrea Heinz Sure. So in a synopsis, basically, the instep model is a bell curve. At the very lowest point, at the beginning, that's the entry phase into prostitution. So most women, as we know, when they enter into the commercial sex industry, they have poverty, they have prior trauma, prior sexual abuse. They're coerced in some kind of way, economically, socially. So when they are at this low point of entry, all that they can see is the upward climb. They can only see the money that they're going to make, the reduced hours of so-called work that they're going to be doing. The freedom that comes with being self-employed, for some of them, the gifts, the trips, the false accolades of admiration, all of it just looks positive, right? When you're at that rock bottom, it's like, if you're starving to death, okay, you might not want to steal something, but you're going to be like, hey, there's my meal, right? So you're just seeing the good in that situation. Then they enter into what's called the positive active phase. And that's where they become active in the commercial sex industry and they're really believing it is good for them. And this is very common among quasi-autonomous women. So women who are not trafficked and women who are not these so-called happy hookers, these fully autonomous sex sellers. The model exists just for quasi-autonomous women. So women like myself that didn't have an innate desire to sell sex but had poverty or prior abusive relationships that diminished our self-worth that made us see the commercial sex trade as some type of relief from that reprieve. So entry phase, you're low. Now you're into the positive active. So now you're getting the money. Now you are working less hours. You're having all these wonderful things happen in comparison to where you were coming from. So at that point, oh my gosh, this is the best decision I ever made. Sex work is work. This is awesome. I will never do anything else. Like, why would I go make $30 an hour busting my back whenever I can make $300 an hour? So you're on the climb is what I call that. then when you reach the highest point of that, that's what I call the tipping point. So that typically comes when women have had the ability to clear some debts or have experienced those positive feelings. But the tipping point at the top of this bell curve is usually then characterized by a catalyst. So it could be either a negative catalyst, like an accumulation of violence, onset of depression, dissociation, you know, whatever may be, or it could be a positive catalyst, getting, you know, falling in love with someone who authentically is a good person, getting pregnant and having a child and feeling that bond, getting a good job offer where you have a livable, viable wage. So the tipping point is usually preceded by a positive or a negative catalyst. After that happens, then they start into the negative active phase. and that is the downward descent. So that one I've broken into two different categories. The first one is stage one, and that's where you're starting to see kind of the toxicity of the commercial sex industry, the harm, the violation being used, being dehumanized, and you're kind of like, this is not great. Like, oh, there is harm here. The rose colored glasses have come off. But at that point, you are so deeply conditioned through sex work ideology that you're still trying to get back over that tipping point, back to the climb, back to the positive active experience. So you're in the still state of justification and rationalization. Once you enter into stage two of the negative active phase, that's where you have no delusions whatsoever anymore about your experiences that you've had. You stop making excuses for the jobs that have hurt you. You stop making excuses for the industry at large. You stop making excuses for the ideology that's happening. And now you're like, okay, I want to exit. Like this is not helping me. Sure, I made a lot of money. That wasn't worth it. This is harmful. This is toxic. And then they enter into the exit phase. So the points of intervention that are best for therapists or anyone looking to advocate and intervene with exit service provision is the point of entry, obviously, before they can start that positive climb. So ways to keep them out of prostitution before they even get started. And then the next one is stage two of the negative active phase. So that's when, again, there's no more delusions. They are ready to exit. They're open to how they can do that. And then obviously the last point of intervention is the exit phase itself. Because we know that a lot of people won't seek resources until they've exited because they can't go against the beast. They can't challenge the machine, the money, the system. So, the entry phase stage 2 of. the negative active phase, and the exit point are the only three points that you can realistically hope to have any messaging heard by women who are quasi-autonomous in the commercial sex trade. If you try to give them all of this information when they're on the climb in the positive active, they'll just dismiss you. They will be like, no, you don't know what you're talking about. Oh, look, this is way better than where I came from. I'm making so much money. Like, no, no, you can't tell me anything. It'll just fall on deaf ears. And, you know, at any point, of course, you can plant a seed and you can say something. And maybe what you have said in that positive active phase will be recalled at the later stages of the negative active or the exiting phase, but it's not going to have a powerful impact right in that moment when you deliver it. So it's not there to discourage people from constantly advocating for awareness and introspection, but it's just to say, have reasonable goals about how effective your attempts at intervention support is going to be at these varying stages of the journey. So I have personally journeyed on that bell curve. I started at a very low point. The sex industry was very appealing. I became deeply brainwashed while I was active in the sex trade for about five years. And then I journeyed through that negative active where it was just horrible, absolutely horrible. That was the worst moments of prostitution for me was once the delusions had left and I was left with my true self being in that room with those men. And then of course exiting, we can try to become this like patchwork quilt of, you know, trauma tips that we've been giving, therapy sessions that we've had, peer support with other women. But at the end of the day, we are a broken version of ourselves that we have tried to glue back together. And that's not to discourage anyone from obviously exiting and healing, because it's a way better place to be than where we come from. But I think it's also very cruel to tell women that just once they are physically removed from the commercial sex trade, that somehow suddenly they will no longer carry any of the harm or impacts of that. So it's a very big process. All the women that I know that are now exited have all journeyed on that bell curve as well. And unfortunately, there's some women that I do feel plateau. They don't hit a tipping point. They come up from the entry point. They climb through the positive active phase, and then they just deaden. They just flatten. They resign themselves to it. You know, this is who I am. This is what I'm destined to be. I can never and will never be anything else. And a lot of the times we see those are the women that dive very deep into drug addiction and also into materialism to try to just self-soothe that ongoing harm. But they're just not at the point of having had a catalystic moment that can really break that trend, I guess you could say, or that pattern that they are going through. So I really hope that people read the paper. I really always try to pass it on to as many therapists as I can because To me, it's really reflective of what we all go through when we're not trafficked and not the so-called happy hookers. And so, you know, in my opinion, that's about 80% of the population of sex sellers. So I think it's a really important model that, you know, gives encouragement to therapists, but also gives some insight into women, into the journey that they are going to likely travel on. I've had several women after the exit say, reading your paper was actually my tipping point catalyst. That was the boom moment where I was like, holy crap, I have gone on this journey. And now here I am hearing the words and not diluting myself or filtering them through this lens of sex work, labor analysis whenever I'm taking it in. So thank you for writing it. So I'm really thankful I wrote that. I didn't ever see myself becoming a published scholar whenever I was, you know, in the basement of a brothel, essentially letting men abuse me day in and day out. I never thought I'd ever have academia recognize me for my experiences and my observations. And I'm very honored to Dr. Donna Hughes from Dignity Journal that she saw that in me and that she gave me the chance to, you know, put that model out and hopefully help other people.

01:11:43 Stephanie Winn You can now watch No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care. This medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation, is the definitive film on detransition. Stream the film now or purchase a DVD. Visit nowaybackfilm.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on Twitter at 2022affirmation or on Instagram at affirmationgeneration. Let's talk about that entry phase, if that's alright, because you articulated all of that so beautifully, and for any therapists listening to this who've made it this far in the interview who are thinking about having, you know, someone in their office who's going through this, that might be the most sensitive time to this dynamic of judgment, right? That place that you have to walk really carefully because I would imagine that just the right amount of firmness or guidance or challenging or psychoeducation in therapy could potentially save a woman from making really harmful decisions, and many therapists are timid about being directive or challenging our clients. For you, if I may use you as an example, or you could bring it back to the model and just speak generally about what works for other people, but if it's alright just to kind of start here, when you were young and broke, that financial pressure was coming from a history of bad relationships, as I understood it. and not that the men in those relationships ever treated you as badly sexually as the sex buyers, but you were in poverty because of boyfriends who were taking advantage of you financially. That's my understanding of the situation, and so even though you were working multiple jobs, it felt like there was not ever enough that you could do to dig yourself out of this financial hole, and that was a big part of the reason that you ended up where you did. You also have used the term brainwashing, and I would describe some of your stories is that you were naive at that age. You really didn't know what you were getting into at first. So if those are some of the risk factors for you, I'm sure those are common to many women, the combination of being naive, broke, and brainwashed, what are some ways that, let's say you'd gone to a therapist that time, I don't know if you ever did, but what could someone have said that would have been just the right amount of you know, let's say firm directive guidance, but also respect curiosity exploration that would have been helpful to you or maybe to someone else in that situation.

01:14:25 Andrea Heinz Oh, and I've revisited that in my own mind countless times thinking, what could someone have said to me in that moment? Because obviously that's what we as abolitionists and feminists and people who care about women want to say to women. It's like, what are the tools? Like, what are the magic words? And I honestly, sadly think that there isn't too much that could have been said to me in that moment because I was so on the brink of homelessness. I was about to lose my housing. I had $60,000 of commercial debt. I had seven years of super abusive relationships where my self-esteem was absolutely rock bottom. I had no financial literacy. I had no post-secondary education. I had no viable skills. So I do think that there is this bigger, obviously, conversation that we have to have around just women's socioeconomic equality and how we're setting women up essentially to fail and to be exploited because there is absolutely no other option. for women to make the kind of money that they can make in prostitution any other way when they're so young and so, like you said, naive and kind of new to adulthood. But I do wish that someone would have pointed out consent to me and what actually constitutes sexual consent. Because I think that I didn't have an understanding and I told myself I am consenting to enter the commercial sex industry. In believing that, that led me into subjecting myself to a lot of things that were wrong, that were harmful, and for me to then justify that. Oh, but self, you chose this, right? You made the choice to call that brothel ad. You chose to do this, you know? And so I struggle when people come at me now and say, you chose that. Because I say, if you look at actual definitions of sexual consent, Coerciveness is not part of that. Like that does not bode well with actually obtaining someone's authentic sexual consent. And often the easiest way to explain it to people is the FRIES acronym. So French fries, everyone loves fries, right? So the F, freely given, obviously right there, prostitution does not meet that criteria. It is not freely given sexual behavior. It is coerced. either through money, resources, drugs, housing, whatever someone needs at that moment. So right there, it's not sexual consent. Reversible. So F-R for Fries, reversible. Could I have turned those people away without experiencing undue hardship upon myself economically, or perhaps experiencing violence by that man because I've turned him away? So is it reversible? I don't think so in that regard. Informed is the next one, I. Was it informed? Definitely not. I was under the guise of the social narrative of sex work ideology being the only narrative that existed in comparison to the rampant, dark, dark, sensationalized version of sex trafficking, right? Like overseas, tied to a radiator, you know, beaten, all this kind of stuff. So there was no talk about the gray area. So I don't think I was informed. No one told me anything prior to entering the sex industry about what awaits me. you know, what to expect in any kind of way, the norms, like you said, like the patterns that exist in the industry, there was absolutely nothing. It was come down to the city of Edmonton with your police record check, bring us $200 and here's your paper license to now go sell sex in a brothel for a year. Nobody told me anything. The woman who hired me at the brothel would not tell me anything. She said, go talk to those women over there. And of course they didn't want to help me because I was competition. They're very money focused. There wasn't this collective sisterhood, wonderful thing that we hear about. It's largely a fallacy. So it wasn't informed. Enthusiastic is the E for Fries. It wasn't enthusiastic. I don't know any women who have said my life's goal has been to sexually service men, so to speak, one after another, day in and day out for many years. Men who disgust me, men who are rude to me, treat me poorly. It's just not common that that's a goal for anybody. Now, I guess we're seeing a little bit of a difference with that, with the embedment of sex work ideology capturing younger and younger women and the social contagion of it. But I don't think at its core women are enthusiastic about, you know, prostituting themselves. And then the last one is specific. And that's meaning that you are consenting to something specific. So if someone wants or tries something else, then they are breaching your consent. But what people don't understand is that prostitution is a system of bribery. So even when you're in that room, if you are consenting to say, giving a man oral sex and having sexual intercourse with him, once you are alone in this space, in this locked room with a man who is twice your size, sexually charged and entitled to your body and what they call value for their money, it's very hard to then keep, you know, those boundaries up and say, no, I didn't agree to, you know, giving you oral sex without a condom. I agreed to giving you oral sex with a condom. There is constantly that pressure and it's applied upon the women through, you know, the forms of Hey, I will give you a bad review on the escort review board so that no man comes to stay with you whatsoever or I will not pay you. I will just leave or I will force you to do it because what are you going to do in this moment right now? You can't overpower me. So women are made to believe that they have to consent to a lot of things that they didn't consent to because they need that money. So it's not freely given. It's not reversible. It's not informed. It's not enthusiastic and it's not often specific. So, you know, that's five criteria that constitute true authentic sexual consent. And prostitution doesn't meet any of those, right? It's just a system of coercive behavior with a monetary incentive. So I don't know if anyone could have said anything because I hadn't had someone explain it to me that way. And I think had they explained it to me that way, I would have gone into the industry probably still because I was so broke. and there were so few options for me as a woman elsewhere, but I would have gone in without those blinders on. And maybe in a way that was my saving grace that nobody did tell me that because then I wouldn't have gone on the positive active. I wouldn't have numbed out and dissociated and journeyed along for so long as I had without, I think, kind of internalizing that harm until later stages. But, you know, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? I mean, it's it's a survival technique. It protected me in the moment. But then later in life, you feel very foolish for having not known those things, not understood the bigger picture of it all. And so then you think, well, maybe someone should have told me that. So I really wrestle with all of that in what was said to me, what should have been said to me. Would it have been good to have been said to me at that time or would it have just made it so that I was so present in the moment for all those violations that I would have, you know, OD'd or killed myself just to escape that because I wasn't in this delusional state. So I don't know and I struggle because obviously I'm not a therapist. I really struggle even just to hear sometimes the stories from the women and to share with them and to sit in their pain because I don't know the right things to say. I'm very much an action oriented person. And I, you know, whenever I first exited prostitution, I worked at a nonprofit that helps women who are active in prostitution. And I had a partner. And so we would, you know, assist these women. They would come to us and they would say, this is what happened to me. And right away I'd be like, okay, this is what we need to do. Here's how we're going to move you forward. And my partner would say, let's just slow down. How did that make you feel? Tell us what that did to you. Like she would sit with them in the feelings and I couldn't. And that's something I still very much struggle with is just sitting in those feelings. And I think that that's, you know, a byproduct of having been sexually exploited and shutting those feelings off for so long. So sometimes I even think, like, am I the right person to do any of that one-on-one work with women? And I think that that's why I've kind of shied away from that in a lot of ways, because I don't want to hurt women. I don't want to harm them. I want to change the culture. And I think in changing the culture, that will inevitably help women.

01:23:08 Stephanie Winn Well, that was so beautiful and so articulate. You made a really compelling case for this FRIES model of consent. I think what you said is self-evident and resonant, and I really hope that you can reach many people this way. I thank you so much for finding your voice and doing this advocacy and awareness raising. and sort of deep cultural remediation that you're doing. So at the beginning, we talked about the different things you do. So we mentioned that you're the executive producer of the docuseries Labeled, and you have a book coming out at the end of the year. You're also on Twitter at Hindsight 2020. So let's just kind of recap all the places people can find you.

01:23:54 Andrea Heinz Twitter. That's basically it. I know everyone's like, please make a website, please make a blog, like link to, you know, articles, link to podcasts that you've done, like, kind of create this home base. And I just haven't done it yet. And I, I don't know why, you know, part of it is time, obviously. But part of it too, is that I like to just be in the moment. And I like to just go where I'm led. And I have I've undoubtedly said wrong things in the past or let my own feelings override maybe some of the common sense or things like, I don't know, sometimes I guess, like I said, we are very critical about ourselves. So, I think I just want to keep moving forward rather than trying to collect everything and create some type of database of things I've done. I just welcome people to jump into my journey where it is and come with me going forward. And if they want to go back on anything I've done, that's great. But truthfully, after I do a podcast, I listen to it once just to make sure I didn't say anything totally outlandish. And then I never listened to it again. I don't know why I just have a very hard time going back on work that I've done. And I just want to keep looking forward and moving in that direction. So Twitter is unfortunately the only place that you can find me or X now, I guess. And I worry about that because there could be a day where they just suspend my account or. someone flags me or something, you know, for talking about sex, and I could be off there. And then everything I have said or done is largely scrubbed at that point. So I do worry about that. But I feel like, you know, again, what I've said will hopefully hit people in the hearts in that moment, and that they don't need to go back and review everything I've done to understand my position now. So yeah, it's it's kind of just an active thing going forward on Twitter. But I guess the film labeled is probably in some kind of, I guess, my story, but also just my perspective on it and also touches on my activism and is kind of a a larger collective of some of the things I've done. So I'm very uncomfortable about it coming out. I won't lie. I never saw myself doing such public facing advocacy. I really just joined Twitter to see what people were talking about as feminists and as abolitionists. And I just wanted to educate myself. And then I did start sharing because I wanted to just say things without being censored by the need for money. And then once I started saying things, I started getting a lot of women and feminists and people in the industry following me. And truthfully, I'm very uncomfortable being in that public light. And so, like I said, I have a hard time when people say this is all about attention or you're just trying to, you know, sanitize your past history. It's not the case whatsoever. I just want to be a part of something of the change to help women and to bring forth that honesty and that truth. But yeah, and unfortunately, it's nowadays, it's Netflix, and it's documentaries, and it's things like that, like, you can write all these papers, but really, the people that are reading them are the people that already have some degree of understanding about this topic. If you really want to make these mass social changes, you have to put out some type of media content. And I was just at home one day and kind of deep in thought and all these different things were kind of happening in the Edmonton scene around prostitution and in my friends circles and in my personal life. I was banned from America for 10 years. Whereas the man who invited me to go to America with him as a sex buyer, they actually phoned ahead and held the plane for him. So like all these things were happening where I was trying to kind of clear that and take my family on a trip to Disneyland because my kids want to go. So I said, all these things are happening and now seems like the right time to do this larger media project. So I just searched Edmonton film production companies, Edmonton, and the very first name that popped up was Guerrilla Motion Pictures. And for anyone who is familiar with the commercial sex industry, there's two types of exploiters of pimps and traffickers. There's Romeo pimps, which, you know, lure the women in through love and romance and, oh, you're my girlfriend and hey, we're doing this together to make money to buy a house. And then the other one is gorilla pimps, and those are the men or women that use threats and violence and, you know, I will kill your family if you don't go sell sex and make me money. So as soon as I saw them as the first ones that popped up, I took it as a sign from, you know, the universe that they were my people and that they would be open to this. And so I reached out to them just with this random email, which they probably thought I was crazy. And I said, do you want to make a documentary? Like, you know, this has to hit a larger level so that people can really hear this. And they said, yeah, let's meet. And so we met at a restaurant and it's just two men in their early 30s. They're lovely men who really knew nothing about prostitution prior to this. And we met and we had a really good conversation. And then we spent three and a half years filming. We did over 80 shoots, over 500 hours of footage, some traveling, all this kind of stuff, interviewing. Everybody that you can imagine, receptionists that were at brothels, former sellers and buyers, active sellers and buyers, politicians, our police chief, advocates, XYZ. There's so many interviews that we've done and it really gives a good Look into the industry as well as just the current climate. So, right now, we're working our way through some of the film festival circuit and we're in talks with an agent that we have representing us. Who's talking to some networks about distribution. And stuff like that, so it's, it's, it's all very uncomfortable to me, but, you know, I do it for women and I do it for. my old version of myself. And so that makes it all worth it. But I do know it's going to come with a lot, a lot of hate, because I already get so much of it on Twitter. And I know that this will only amplify it, but it's a conversation that has to be had. So if it, if it happens, then great. If not, it was at least a very healing journey to go through it and make the film.

01:30:17 Stephanie Winn Well, thank you so much for your courage and for sharing your story so that you can help other people. I think you'll touch many lives. Where can people watch the film?

01:30:28 Andrea Heinz Right now, nowhere, unless they are attending these film festivals, because that's where it's showing right now. So unfortunately, when you are in the film festival circuit, they don't allow you to show the film, you know, in community halls or theaters, or even just share it, you know, publicly with others. So, yeah, unfortunately. But down the line, it'll be available. Yeah, yeah. I'm hoping that we do get a major distributor, someone like Netflix or Amazon, because I really think, again, that once women are at least given this counter narrative or some exposure to it, I think it will change a lot of how they view what they're being fed through, you know, people that are looking to profit off of them or exploit them sexually.

01:31:07 Stephanie Winn That's really great. Well, I wish you all the best of luck with that. And thank you again.

01:31:12 Andrea Heinz Thanks. Thank you for taking the time to raise these conversations because, you know, a lot of people just don't want to even touch this topic. So knowledge is power and I appreciate all that you do. So thank you.

01:31:25 Stephanie Winn I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.