Clementine (People 2021, by Annick Ramp) - Swiss Press Award

Die Republik

Annick Ramp

Critics say sex work is always dehumanising. Clementine doesn’t see it that way. The 39-year-old comes from Belarus; she had started studying economics before she came to Switzerland and decided to take up sex work after becoming unemployed. “Receiving unemployment benefits was ­always out of the question for me.” ­Today she is annoyed that while she pays taxes, she cannot get a bank loan for her business. She rents out rooms for sexual services at nine locations – to young and older women, trans people and dominatrixes who: “work just like me, independently and professionally”. And the clients? “Ordinary and primarily decent men, who ­prefer to go unnoticed. Is that so hard to ­understand?”