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The person behind the desk at the Burgeramt wanted me to tell her out loud my full name and my address, so she could tell me where to go. I said, „Um no –  I told you why I’m here, I’m not telling you my address! There are a lot of people listening here!” She got very aggressive and told me that I should get out of her room and talk to her boss if I wasn’t happy with how things went. Which I actually did! He said that what she did was not okay. He apologized, but nothing further. Anti-whore people are everywhere and no one gives a shit. I wouldn’t risk working without a registration because I am already a migrant and I’m trying to become a German citizen. 

No. I haven’t registered. I don’t even have a registration for residence here. I want to register. Right now, I cannot rent a place to live in. I have to pay every night for a hotel and this is expensive. I really want to have my own place. There is nobody who can help me with the registration.

I found the whole thing a little chaotic to begin with. There was a whole period of time where nothing was really clear. The studio I’m attached to said if you want to keep working you have to register, and then a whole bunch of people left. It was very weird, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do and where I’m supposed to go, so I actually got my submissive to find out the information for me. 

First you have to go through this super old-school sexual health session. They assume that you’re going to get pregnant because you are having sex with clients. I’ve been doing this for a really long time now. I know more about safer sex and consent and so many other things than they know themselves in that office. What was good about it is that the person doing it was super lovely and understood that I was experienced. 

After doing the health appointment, I went for the counselling one at the Schöneberg town hall. It’s really interesting, because you’re basically on display there. The office is specifically for sex workers but there is no waiting area. People are coming for weddings and engagements, so you’ve got people running through the building all the time. You’re just there in a corridor, sitting on a seat.  

It will be weird to see my real name and my alias together on the Hurenpass. I do think that for those who worked in brothels before, there has always been a connection for the police between identity and work. I have heard stories where you’re pulled over and the cop’s looking at your papers, has called to check and then came back with a certain comment like, ‘oh you also work in this brothel.’ Maybe in front of your friends and family. This is because they collect data from raids, and brothels are always raided every once in a while, mostly for taxes. I don’t know why, but I was already really intimidated by these tax people, the Steuerfahndung. It’s so intrusive somehow. You’re there in your thong, and you show your passport, which you don’t ever show to anyone in this place. No one knows your name, and there you stand.

I was in Reinickendorf. That wasn’t a very good idea. It was at the Gewerbemeldeamt, where all kinds of people come to register their trade. I went to the counter and said, “I’m here because of the new law and I’d like to get registered”. He turned and shouted across the whole room, “Yes, someone is here because of the Prostitution Law!” Inside, I was quite mad.

Even though I called and they told me I didn’t need to bring anything, it turned out I should have brought passport photos. So I went to the Bürgeramt to use the photo booth, fifteen minutes away. I came back, said I was here before. He shouted again, “Yes! Because of the Prostitution Protection Act!” I said, “Exactly, thank you, I’ve got that by now…” Then I went to this lady and asked her if I can get the preliminary certificate with my work alias. I said that I have the right to get a certificate with my alias. She didn’t even know what that was. She went through her file, probably without actually reading the text of the law and said, “that doesn’t exist”, so I didn’t get it in the end. 

Anyway, I had to hand it to the studio, as otherwise I couldn’t have continued working, and now I’m registered with my real name. She also asked me, “What are you doing there exactly?” Then of course, I didn’t use all these words for what I do, like slave. I said: “I work in a studio, note that down, I take that slip of paper and I’m gone.” She also couldn’t give me information about what will happens with my data. Great, so I gave them my name, my profession, my pictures, and I don’t know what will happen with my data. That’s shit.

The certificate was handwritten, put together without a template. It’s just snot and looks cheap. Black and white, printed on A4, more like a letter. “She was here and tried to get registered, because of the ProstititutionProtection Act”. She spelled it wrong… If you call it a pass or ID card to begin with, then it should also look like that, like a drivers license or something. It’s bad enough that I have to carry such a thing on me, but at least it should look pretty. At least it has an administrative stamp on it. 

I recently wanted to work in Baden-Würtemberg. They already had the real registration, and raids were happening, so I knew that I could be checked. I needed to get registered. I did it at Fröbelstraße, the Prenzlauer Berg Ordnungsamt. There I said, “Hey, I want to register for the new Prostitution Protection Act.” The lady was very surprised, because I stood in front of her with a cappy and hoody, and didn’t look much like a sex worker. The guy there clearly didn’t know much about the topic, and I had to have this whole back and forth with him about why I needed to register. He made a stupid comment like, “Well, then you have to know if this is the right job for you.“ But I’m always positive in these kind of situations and just drop two or three sentences like, “I’m being treated incredibly respectfully, I have all other options, I studied, this and that, I’m very conscious of what I’m doing, it’s a great option – and I can imagine that most of the people here would be much happier in my job.”

I had to go back a second time. On my preliminary certificate they needed the address, my work name – I didn’t use my real work name. I put Judith Butler. To leave some mark, a comment, some kind of confusion, even though I don’t know if anyone at the administration knows who Judith Butler is. I don’t want to become a victim of the law, rather I want to make it mine – even kind of like, yeah here is my Hurenpass with my name on it and I claim this identity. I don’t hide or hush. 

I registered because otherwise you can’t work in a brothel, or not in the legal brothels. I went to register, and it was really annoying because it was super hard to get information. We had to drive through the whole town and go from this office to that office, burgeramt or whatever-amt. The people in the office were super annoying and disrespectful. When we asked questions, they were like, ‘you’re not here to discuss!’

You know, it was like talking to cops or something. It was really nasty. My friend asked, “can you guarantee us that our data is safe?” and they said, “If I wanted your data I could just wait in front of your brothel and follow you home, so don’t worry about your data being safe.” So it was like, ‘okay so you’re a stalker!’ 

I actually won’t take the pass anywhere with me. My wallet just got stolen recently, and all my cards were found and someone was so nice to return them. You know, if I have this Hurenpass in there it’s like ‘okay, you’re a whore and I have all of your information’.

I think the people doing the registration don’t really have any idea about it. The one at the health thing, she is a social worker. The guy who is organizing that other office, the counselling one, used to be a flight attendant. Then his last job was working for Flixbus. But he said he parties a lot in Berlin so he knows people from this area. I don’t know! 

The social worker at the health appointment knows some things, but she told me to always use a condom. The law says that you have to use a condom for oral sex, but that’s difficult; my clients wouldn’t accept that with this idea of GFE (Girlfriend Experience). She didn’t know what that meant. I would rather speak to colleagues about sexual health than to them because they don’t have any idea about the job.

They have now sent my name to the Finanzamt, the tax office, so the Finanzamt knows that I am working as a prostitute. And of course, they will check my invoices, maybe more so than before. This is why most of the girls don’t want to declare, but I think this is the main reason for the law. They want to check on people to see if they do their taxes right. The worst thing for me though, is that if I really want to stop doing this, someone could later find out what I did.

In Berlin it’s not working. You just go to the office and you get a piece of paper which says ‘I tried to get registered’. You can choose a work name. I just put what many people put: Alice Schwarzer. Half of our BDSM studio is Alice Schwarzer, including me. Yeah so it’s kind of our ‘fuck you, it’s your fault that we are getting this fucked up law so all our names are you’.

It’s this old Nazi law which is coming back. The last time we had this whore passport had been during National Socialism, and we ended up forced into brothels and there was mass raping and yeah, we feel it’s going backwards at a fast speed.

I refuse to get registered because I know that the first time you get caught you get away with it, and the second time you have to pay a fine. The second that Germany forces me to register, I’ll probably leave the country. I think this registry is absolutely fascist. If I was, say, a nurse or an electrician and I had to register my profession, I would have no problem with it, but the German government does absolutely nothing to support me in my job. I pay for my own health insurance, which covers nothing. I have no idea where I’d be able to get free condoms in this city. I’ve been to a sexual health clinic in Hermannplatz where they had no free condoms. The fact that this law is being packaged as ‘helping sex workers’ is disgusting. 

We’ve all said we don’t want it and they won’t listen. As a foreign sex worker, I am the type of person they are trying to target to get out of the country. It’s not going to doanythingto stop sex trafficking. If you can force someone to do sex work, I’m pretty sure you can get them to sign a piece of paper and go to a fucking office. If you look in history, governments have not been kind to sex workers. And if we look at the direction that the world is heading right now, there is no way I want to be in a registry with my real name associated with sex work. I mean Stalin, one of the first things he did was round up sex workers and execute them. I really feel this is the direction the world is heading now. Germany especially! With their history of lists. Lists of marginalised people! I don’t think I wanna be on a German list of marginalised people. No thank you. I mean look – Nazis are back! … I shouldn’t say that so loudly, but Nazis are back! There are demonstrations in Berlin! Thousands of people are marching on the streets saying, „We are Nazis!“ That’s recent. It’s coming back; everything is coming back.