Sex Positive

People malign sex workers without realizing they're talking to one...

Some sex worker rights activists say that white women like Evie should come out as an act of solidarity. If everyone who’s had sex for money were open about it, would the public accept that sex work defies stereotypes and is more prevalent than most imagine? The answer is a Catch-22. Stigma and severe criminal penalties keep people from openly fighting laws and cultural attitudes.

Whorephobia drives me insane, especially when it results in separation and even worse among sex workers. Perhaps nowhere is this as clear than the divide between porn stars and all the other sex wo...

I met Antonia Crane when I was putting together an anthology I did about sex work & sex workers. From our first correspondence it was clear she was smart, articulate, funny, talented, ballsy and didn't take herself too seriously. I knew she had a...

One of the biggest parts of the job, and the most difficult, is to keep our reactions to ourselves. Most of you can automatically think of the ‘strange’ things we see & do in a typical day. And, sure sometimes we want to giggle. Or sometimes, a client is so nervous to even ask for something (and many times it is not as ‘weird’ as they fear!) that we are tempted to laugh at the anxiety & relief we feel when a very simple act (such as a blow job) is requested after minutes of stammering!

This is the full text of the interview with feminist genderqueer sex worker @MxLaudanum, which was quoted in this article on the rescue industry I wrote for Cliterati (published 1/02/14). The interview itself makes a very powerful post in its own right. Written in just a couple of hours, it’s a stunning critique of contemporary feminism and how all of us on this planet tend to view the world in black and white.

At AVN, a mainstream director said feminist porn made her uncomfortable. The industry is taking notice of feminism and they don't like being criticized...

I wanted to write something about the human body in all its naked and diverse glory. I wanted to share the unexpected gift that sex work gave me; forgiveness for all my physical imperfections.

Working as a sex worker for many years I have seen naked bodies belonging to my clients, my co workers and myself in all sorts of positions, settings and lighting. Over the years I have become incredibly comfortable with human bodies and getting naked but that wasn’t always the case.

Taking my clothes off and showing my naked body to someone I just met, AND  having the nerve to expect them to pay me for it, was my first and most persistent fear about starting sex work. Before sex work my experience of being naked in front of people had largely been in the dark, after foreplay and with lots of anxiety. Each time i let my mind wander  what it would be like to do sex work, I would get stuck at the bit where I had to take off my clothes.

And it wasn’t just a concern for the first booking

I know many of you who read here are, or have been, sex workers. Myself included, of course. We consider ourselves to be sex positive feminists who want sex work to be recognized and respected as work. Most of us believe it should be decriminalized, if not completely legal, even if  we often disagree about how best to achieve those things. But often in our conversions on the subject of (and issues surrounding) sex work, it is clear that many hold onto their own experiences at the expense of seeing the larger picture. Just like those who were harmed come out swinging “against” sex work, we let our feelings color and even cloud our willingness to hear from others.

You’d expect the story of a young woman crawling out of abject poverty and an exploitative dead-end career into a professional well-respected vocation to be heralded with praise. But this story does not end well. The woman, having spent years putting a dark past behind her, is once again punished and ultimately ridiculed — kicked back into the dirt from whence she came.

Because if you were once involved in the sex industry you can never be a teacher. In fact, that pretty much means that you are never qualified to do any work beside sex work.

It’s not the sex industry that is the problem. It’s our inability to separate it from real life and real people.

The existence of courtesans is a glaring refutation of neofeminist dogma about objectification, the eternal victimhood of whores, etc; the fact that the most celebrated, successful and highly-paid harlots of all time were often those who were educated and could match or surpass men in intellectual pursuits throws a huge spanner into the catechism that prostitution is a manifestation of male dominance over women, that our clients hate us, and so on.  Whenever possible, neofeminist historians deny that courtesans were prostitutes, pretend that accomplished women were not really courtesans, or describe them with circumlocutions like, “she chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.”  And when all else fails, they simply ignore them.  Fortunately neither male historians nor female ones with less parochial views feel the need to dissemble about such women, and among them Tullia d’Aragona is rightfully viewed as worthy of respect and study.

Adult performers who get work elsewhere can be fired if their past comes out -- and there's no legal recourse

[M]ostly, sex workers look like any ordinary joe, cellulite, disproportionate bodies, a range of colour, caste, social background, political intent. A range of reasons. A range of experiences.

Our society turns a blind eye to the murder of sex workers, deeming them less than human. Why is that?

...Twenty years ago I first asked two questions that continue to unsettle me today. The first is answerable: What does a woman who sells sex accomplish that leads to her being treated as fallen, beyond the pale, incapable of speaking for herself, discountable if she does speak, invisible as a member of society? The answer is she carries a stigma. The second question is a corollary: Why do most public conversations focus on laws and regulations aimed at controlling these stigmatized women rather than recognizing their agency? To that the answer is not so straightforward.