Photo by Flickr user mac42. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Kink in exile, who works for international charity groups and moonlights on the side as a sex-worker recounts a funny-on-the-surface, scary-underneath anecdote

A while ago I was working in a private show booth at a peep show.  I had a guy come in with a special request.

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“Dominate me.“  It wasn’t a command; more like a whispered plea. ... How do you dominate someone through a glass wall?

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But as soon as the guy’s orgasm was over he turned beet red.  He practically burrowed into the wall while trying to simultaneously put his pants on, shove a very generous tip into my box, and apologies for making me do that.  Pants on, he ran out of the both faster than any customer before or since.

It breaks my heart that anyone would be so ashamed of their desires.  I swear, I want to take them home like lost puppy dogs.

She said it here. (Emphasis mine)

The relationship between sex workers and customers is far more complex than most people give them credit for. On the one hand if one felt sex work was a bad idea one might feel irked that the guy, no matter how shy or how sincere his apology, sought to pay someone to do something he believes was demeaning to her. But then you might miss the opportunity to be justifiably compassionate for someone so benighted he can’t imagine women wanting to be sexual, let alone sexually dominant without unless someone pays them to be. The point being that while it’s pretty great that Kink in Exile was there for him his homelife, the place where all that baggage surely remains packed, may not be much fun for him… or his partner or partners.

Anyway, I think people get the idea I’m hostile to sex work in general, and maybe prostitution in particular, because I say things like that about customers. But the thing is I’m not hostile to it, I’m just aggravated, concerned, and impatient with it’s overall current state.

Which involves too many circumstances like Kink in Exile’s where someone already deeply conflicted comes in, requests and receives a particular activity, and then rushes out the door ashamed (maybe ok) and apologizing for… requesting and receiving the activity. So I’m going to repeat, without focusing too narrowly on that one individual, what’s the overall consequence of customers who feel that conflicted?

One hopes they’re enormously thankful that someone’s out there who can accomodate their particular hot buttons, and one is sure that often that’s exactly how they feel. But… there’s also a very strong tendency for people, once their arousal hormones subside, to feel loathing not only for themselves but the people they feel “enable” them. This is how the serial killler Gary Ridgeway felt about the prostitutes he initially hired, then hired and murdered, and then possibly just murdered. The point being not (obviously) that conflicted customers become serial killers of prostitutes but that the continuum of conflicted feelings can extend in directions other than gratitutde.

So when I say I’m impatient with sex work as it stands I mean I wish it was legal enough, and customers and the friends, family, and acquaintances of customers, were mature and well-informed enough that people recognized that sex workers — like psychiatrists, dentists, proctologists, and other health providers — are trained and able to meet possibly embarrassing needs of their clients without themselves being being embarrassed or degraded. I’m not saying it’s the responsibility of sex workers to councel, educate, or even engage customers in order to promote a better understanding. I am saying I’m aggravated, concerned, and impatient that such understanding is not in evidence (as evidenced by, for instance, Kink in Exile’s customer.) And I feel that way because I believe the status quo puts sex worker’s lives, safety, and legal freedoms at risk.

And here’s another element of the equation with that customer I’m concerned about. If he leaves, ashamed and apologetic, and believing he’s just paid someone to demean herself for his gratification (which, remember, wasn’t Kink in Exile’s experience of it) then what, exactly, is going to be his sexual, let alone emotional, relationship with his partner at home?

We already know “whore” is a pretty common put-down for women who don’t fit, especially, men’s ideas of women’s sexual propriety. (Remember the flip side of the “no-sex” class paradigm: women not only aren’t naturally sexual but shouldn’t be!) So what if this guy accidentally let’s slip his “filthy secret” and his partner says “Oh sweetie is that all? No problem… now touch your toes.” To be honest that would be wonderful and they’d live happily ever after. But… also to be honest… I don’t see it happening. First because he clearly doesn’t think it’s appropriate in the first place, and second because he can go pay already “sullied” peep-show operators or maybe “pro-doms” to take that hit.

My point is, over and over again, that it’s not a problem that there are people… mostly but not exclusively women… who will indulge their customer’s fantasies and/or urges. In fact there’s nothing wrong with that at all. Nor, for that matter, is it a problem that men who know exactly what they’re doing and don’t have any conflicts would hire prostitutes either. Instead my point is it’s exactly a problem that there are customers like Kink in Exiles. It’s a problem that many customers — too many — are like hers.

Am I even saying that if it’s detected it’s the sex-worker’s responsibility to work to alter a customer’s negative, two-faced, and incorrect attitudes not only towards them but towards other, non-paid partners in his life? Not necessarily.

I am saying, however, that too much of the indirect, “collateral” harm done by prostitution in the world is done because too many customers, and too many people who see themselves as “too good” to become customers, have those dangerously, amounts-to-misogynistically alienated attitudes.

Sure only “whores” have sex willingly? So much more reason to lacerate your daughters with FGM. Sure “whores” are already impure anyway? So much more reason to choose one of them when you’re looking for someone to rob, rough up, rape, or serially murder. Feel conflicted about “out of the ordinary**” sex with women? Well then if hiring a “free” woman gives you too much of the willies then how about a nice really “out of it” target like an substance-abuser/subsistance prostitute? Or a trafficked one? You already feel horrible about yourself so… why not go whole hog?

Bottom line is that I feel absolutely unambiguously that prostitution (as opposed to involuntary sexual slavery… or any kind of slavery) ought to be legal because I believe that’s the best way to protect all sex workers (and not just all the other kinds of sex workers except prostitutes.) But I agree with… a subset of sex-work opponents that merely legalizing it won’t solve the underlying social problems that leave us with customers running away in shame, relieved that the “good” women in your life have been “spared.”

Unlike anti-sex-worker activists I just happen think the solution is to get rid of the attitudes, not the sex workers. (In fact anti-sex-workers often contribute to the problem by characterizing sex workers as drones, slaves, and indeed never naturally interested in “kinks,” as well as characterizing customers as already irredeemable evildoers. Instead of hung-up bozos.***)

[** Remember, despite all talk of desperate customers seeking “unusual” services, for too many customers what counts as “unusual” is… oral sex, hand-jobs, and maybe anal intercourse. Sure, Kink in Exile’s customer was a little further across the lane markers but… not so much further over that he should have felt so conflicted. Which is, again, why I consider it a warning sign.) —fl]

[*** If you as a customer, or your personal customers, are not hung-up bozos then good for you, you’re obviously not who I’m worrying about. On the other hand who I am worrying about is making your life a heck of a lot harder. —fl]