Any Girl Quotes

“Re-enacting trauma means putting yourself in similar situations or places to the original trauma, or finding similar people, and to create a new narrative in an attempt, this time, to be in control, to write a new ending, one in which you are in charge, not victimised. The sex trade is the perfect place for the sexually traumatised to try unconsciously to resolve former hurt because an unending number of men want to use your body. This is one of the reasons those who have suffered sexual abuse are so prevalent in the sex trade.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“They want the woman to be a sexual machine and do everything asked of her without refusal or complaint, but they also want her to fake that she’s not a sexual machine. She must look happy doing it. She can express feelings, but only the male-pleasing ones.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“If the men who paid me weren’t rapists, if this was all consensual sex, why am I traumatised by it? Why do I experience flashbacks with the same tone and texture as flashbacks I have had from being raped? I have had a lot of sex I regret having which I am not traumatised by. There is sometimes sadness, but not trauma. I experience trauma and flashbacks only in relation to sexual exploitation. Sex that didn’t involve money, in which I’ve felt dissociated, or didn’t feel like it, or when I didn’t stop something I wasn’t comfortable with has not traumatised me in the way sex-trade sex has – sex to which I ‘consented’.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“It comes down to this: if men believed that sex was a mutual activity between two human beings based on equal respect and power, the sex trade would not exist.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“Agreeing to something does not make that thing any less harmful for our bodies or minds. It is psychologically exhausting, damaging and toxic to fake a connection to someone, especially a sexual connection. Not being free to be yourself in such a vulnerable and intimate situation is physically and psychologically exhausting. Being paid to have sex on someone else’s terms is the farthest thing from sexual autonomy that exists.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery

“Compared to everything else that had gone on and was continuing to go on, it didn't seem like a big thing. I didn't recognise it as assault. When you are used to abuse, assaults become part of the tapestry of your life.”
― Mia Döring, Any Girl: A Memoir of Sexual Exploitation and Recovery