Blurring the Lines

My use of the words escort and sex worker inhabit mostly political terrain for me. In the strictest sense, an escort accompanies a client to a given location or event. Most escorts of course, do not venture from their private apartments where they entertain clients. I no longer do escorting. I am no longer selling my services as an escort and so I am clear that I am at this point, a former escort.

Sex worker is a different word with different connotations. Some people think sex workers are doing illegal activities and others are pretty sure sex workers take off their clothes.  But in reality, a wide variety of jobs and professions qualify to be called sex work and therefore many people who do diverse things for a living can be referred to as sex workers. In fact, some people call themselves a sex worker simply because they write about sex for a living.  That is a bit of a stretch but if you add any kind of adult images, then magically the line is crossed and many will agree that someone who writes about sex with naked pictures of themselves is a sex worker.  I suppose the line in most minds occurs at the point where the person selling sex toys or writing about sex, models the sex toys or illustrates the sex they are writing about by using their own body. If a writer or vendor sells images of other naked people, then we are not sure if they qualify to be called a sex worker.

I find these distinctions somewhat arbitrary and limiting.  But even if I go with the definition of sex worker as someone who uses their own body in some way to procure a living, then I still end up with a wider definition of the term than society currently allows for. I would include as sex workers, people who marry for money and both print and runway models. Some performance artists would qualify as sex workers too.  For instance when Karen Finley covered herself in chocolate for a photo shoot with Bill Maher, her use of her own body was deeply sexual as well as political (although I was hard pressed to ascertain what her political message was). But the popular press will always refer to her as an artist instead of a sex worker.

So what is the difference between someone like Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle?  Is Annie Sprinkle a sex worker because she used to do porn or because she still uses her naked body in some of her stage performances?  Annie Sprinkle refers to herself as an activist and performance artist at this point. I know she is always comfortable referring to her past as a porn star and prostitute. Annie Sprinkle willingly and graciously stands in solidarity with other sex workers.

When women and transgenders are being murdered for being sex workers, stressing that one is a former sex worker can feel divisive.  It certainly does not seem like a show of solidarity.

Toward the end of a presentation I gave to a feminist class at a college in Marin many years ago, the professor announced that she would like to consider herself an honorary whore as a show of solidarity with all the whores who suffer for being whores. I was touched and impressed.  It was also an instructive moment for me as I realized that people all too often draw lines of distinction between each other in an effort to escape the fate of their contemporaries. I am not such a person and I will not abandon decades of activism now in order to garner a little more public approval. I would much rather enlarge the term sex worker while embracing it and standing in solidarity with other sex workers.

In the strictest sense of the word, I really am a sex worker even today, because I occasionally sell my adult DVDs.  It is funny, really.  Because if I were selling adult DVDs of Annie Sprinkle or Nina Hartley, I would not be considered a sex worker.  And when I stop selling my DVDs (which will eventually happen when I run out of copies as I have no intentions of ordering more) some may stop thinking of me as a sex worker. I, however, am fond of the word. It denotes an important aspect of the Divine Feminine which I feel called to bring forth in a variety of ways.

So while I do not intend to make more porn, I may decide to get naked in front of a camera again.  And if I do, will I be a sex worker or just like every actress in Hollywood?  Where is that magical line between the good girls and the bad girls, anyway?  I am not sure but when I find it, you can count on my arriving with a big eraser determined to blur the line even more.

Powerful Women

I have found it to be quite true, that men of a certain type of power and success, can be easily intimidated by female power. For instance, they often marry vapid women who are more interested in their money than them. So many of my clients expressed a sense of entitlement regarding their wives – they were providing for them so they didn’t feel incongruent about “cheating” on them. I often asked individual men if they thought their wife was also stepping outside the marriage. The very idea would often elicit a scoff as almost every man had convinced himself that only he would engage in such behavior.

What I found particularly intriguing was how many of these same men hungered for a sexual companion who was anything but malleable. It led me to begin referring to this phenomena in this way:

Our culture prefers that Wives are Dumb and Docile but that does nothing for the Libido. Men may want wives and girlfriends who are easily controlled but in bed they prefer a companion who is powerful and challenging. It is the electricity of some level of intellectual and emotional challenge which drives desire. This is why the Patriarchy requires the Whore/Madonna Complex: a splitting of femininity into two camps so that women feel compelled to pick a side and thereby deny half of their reality as a whole human.

There is a beautiful movie entitled Dangerous Beauty. It is about the life of a Renaissance courtesan from Venice, named Veronica Franco. The movie illustrates perfectly the choice women faced of that time between being accepted as a person worthy of marriage (wives were not allowed to read, write or pursue an education) and being a free woman fully empowered to delve into domains normally reserved for men. Veronica Franco was simply too independent and intelligent to be a wife and her mother despaired for her future, so she instructed her in the ways of a courtesan. As a courtesan, Veronica Franco, learned to read and debate men in conversation. She took up fencing and she wrote her memoirs. This was a life of power reserved for courtesans. The price for admission was living outside the protection and approval of society.

Today, we speak of prostitutes as if they all live and work in the squalor of the streets. The fact is that the majority of modern prostitutes operate from their homes discreetly supplementing their incomes and/or financing their dreams, whether that is an education, a sole proprietorship or perhaps their art. They too, are women who are not satisfied with the “good girl” role. They probably feel stifled and silenced and confined by popular feminine behavior. And breaking free of that provides a sense of power they have rarely experienced in other contexts.

It isn’t all sunshine and roses. There are possible arrests and evictions and serial rapists who love to prey upon sex workers because the law affords almost no protection for a “fallen woman.” But for some, the risks are worth it. Anyone who thinks it is just about sex doesn’t understand this fatal split in the feminine. Anyone who thinks is it just about money, doesn’t understand how deeply many humans crave freedom of expression. Sex work is about sex and it is about work, but more importantly it is about breaking free of the rules which dictate women are either “good” or “bad” – either worthy of protection or worthy of persecution.

Few sex workers relate to this on a conscious level, unless they are sex worker rights activists or sacred prostitutes. But I have seen the light in the eyes of women just contemplating sex for money and they look positively excited and energized with the anticipation of what that might feel like and look like for them. I always caution them about the down side – the risk and the illegality and the very real prices I have paid for my choice. I don’t choose to encourage anyone to do something with such a high price tag. But once a woman has crossed that line and experienced her power to reject the shame bestowed upon the “whore” she will likely never be able to return to ways of being in this world which require her to repress her true feelings.

That doesn’t mean she won’t move on to another profession at some point. It does mean that she will be very unlikely to work for an employer once she has tasted her independence. It can also translate to putting up with less domination or abuse from men in general. The woman who has been paid for her companionship is much less likely to put up with anything she doesn’t enjoy or appreciate in a personal relationship. Of course this generalization does not apply to street prostitutes who enter the business under the tutelage of an abusive pimp. Nor does it necessarily apply to prostitutes who work in legal brothels because by definition they have abusive employers. But for your average middle-class, college educated escort, independence of thought and action becomes a privilege few are willing to sacrifice for the approving nods of the masses.