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Becoming a companion almost on purpose

16 March 2010 / 17:03:00  GRReporter
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Anthropologist Liopi Abadji, who gives lectures on gender at the University of Crete, took the hard task to shed light on the night life of the Greeks who go to strip bars and order call girls. For this reason, Ms. Abadji works for four months as a call girl herself. Four months during which she monitored, asked, learned and wrote the inventory codes of conduct in love culture of modern Greece. Her book for “Drink for Company" is a journalistic-scientific research, which reads like a story with good, bad and ugly characters. 

"When I decided to do a study on brothels, every day for a month I was passing through Fili Street in Athens, but I saw that I won’t achieve anything this way. Then a friend of mine told me more about companion girls and took me to several places where he knew there are such girls. One of them is "Nana", where due to a misunderstanding or a game of luck, I turned out to be “on the other side” the following night. From my side it was enough to ask "whether there is work"...," says Mrs. Abadji of how she started her study in an interview for Vima newspaper. 

The anthropologist from the University of Crete claims that companions, as sexual entertainment for men, exist due to the stereotypes of masculinity and femininity in Greece. Ms. Abadji said that "eternal provocative chubbiness of a woman", "voracious sexual desire of men and their obligation to constantly show it", "rule which says that men treat women in a love game”, and because of stewed sexuality within marriage as an institution is the cultural framework within which the profession of companions develops. 

The theory of one part of feminists is that prostitution is "slavery", but they never perceive themselves in this way, says Ms. Abadji. When asked about the fact that the women themselves say they are financially satisfied with their choice and whether this financial collapses the myth of the “woman-victim”, Ms. Abadji reminds of her book about human trafficking issued in 2008 and says that this issue is quite complex. 

"The way immigration policy and work in the sex industry have been shaped in the Western world, the only way for an immigrant woman, working as a companion to become visible is by being a “victim”. Few studies have been made in this area, but all show that those women know in advance what they will do, but they do not know of the poor conditions they will be doing it in. In general I support the theory that the problems faced by immigrants are associated with policies that apply to countries which accept them and that the question of human trafficking is more related to the crisis between the borders of a nation-state in a world that is globalized, as well as with the sexual culture and the bio-politics desire in the western world," says Ms. Abadji. 

Based on materials by Vima newspaper

Tags: Greece brothel companion call girl prostitution research
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