Should All Women Be Sex Workers?
By: Ozy Brennan
Tags: Sex Work, Sex, Feminism, Sex Positivity, Dating

I follow a lot of radical feminist blogs and groups on social media/online. Something that I’ve seen a lot of lately is a promotion of sex work. To be clear, I fully support the decriminalization and destigmatization of sex work. However, I’ve seen a lot of women say that “giving it up for free” is exploitation, especially when accounting for slut-shaming, toxic masculinity, and the prioritization of male pleasure at the expense of women. Put simply, if the sex/relationship is good, then you got pleasured and paid, and if the sex/relationship is bad, at least you got something out of it. That idea makes me uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, but my question is: am I being played or losing out for having sex without any financial gain, whether direct (actual money) or indirect (gifts, paid bills, etc.)? Am I just internalizing whorephobia and letting it stop me from getting what I deserve/earn from my sexual labor?

Man, you know some weird-ass radical feminists. All the ones I know are sex-worker-exclusionary.

There are lots and lots and lots of jobs where you’re paid to provide things that other people provide for free. Nannies and day-care workers are paid to do the job parents do for free. Therapists are paid to do the job that your friends do for free (depending on your therapist and your friends, anyway). Maids and chefs and taxicab drivers are paid to do the jobs that pretty much everyone does for free at least sometimes.

Now, there is legitimate feminist discussion to be had about the working conditions of domestics, nannies, and sex workers, and about the way that traditionally female labor is often treated — by everyone from the people who calculate the GDP to one’s husband— as if it is done by the Laundry Fairy, who causes the clothes to be clean by magic without any human interaction.

But you know what is not even a little bit a feminist take for any of these jobs:

— “Instead of having friends, you should become a therapist! Wanting to have friends instead of being a therapist is just having internalized therapistphobia.”

— “Instead of having kids, you should become a nanny! That way, if they’re cute, you get money and to play with kids, and if they’re brats, at least you get money.”

— “Instead of driving to work, you should become an Uber driver! That way, if you get to where you’re going, you get some extra money, and if you go somewhere else, at least you have money.”

— “Instead of cooking dinner for yourself, you should work at a fast food restaurant! Why are you making food without any financial gain?”

For all of these jobs, doing it for money and doing it in your personal life are different.

When you have sex for money, you are providing a service, the same as a masseuse or a therapist. You have to provide the kind of sex your client is interested in, even if you’re in the mood for a different kind of sex. You will probably end up having sex with clients you aren’t interested in, perhaps ones that repulse you. You have to pretend to be enthusiastic and having a great time, even if you’re actually doing your grocery list in your head. You have to have the physical appearance your clients prefer, even if you’d rather have hairy legs and comfortable underwear. You have to set boundaries politely when in civilian life you’d say “fuck off.”

None of these are unique to sex work. In fact, I think the therapist/sex worker analogy is very productive. Like therapists, sex workers are selling for money a service typically provided for love or pleasure. Like therapists, sex workers often wind up providing service to clients they don’t particularly like and wouldn’t choose to provide the service to outside the workplace. Like therapists, there is a tremendous demand for emotional labor. Just like therapists have to provide unconditional positive regard even if their emotional response is “what the FUCK, asshole”, sex workers have to pretend to be sexually enthusiastic even if their emotional response is “this is as interesting as watching paint dry.” Like therapists, it can be emotionally draining and harrowing work. And like therapists, it is a tremendously one-sided relationship, and if you suggested that being a therapist was a substitute for friendship you would be a dumbass heading on a one-way train to Burnoutville.

I am particularly troubled by the suggestion that one approach romantic relationships as if one were a sugar baby, and that this is somehow radical feminist (?!). The mindset that male-female relationships are primarily transactional is deeply, deeply patriarchal. Across cultures, the patriarchal marriage is an exchange where the woman offers sex, babies, and traditionally female labor, and in exchange the man offers traditionally male labor. (This is sometimes glossed as the exchange of sex for money by idiots who believe in the Laundry Fairy.)

The effects of this mindset on both women and men are corrosive. The legalization of marital rape was justified on the grounds that the man had provided his part and therefore the woman had a legal obligation to provide her part. Marriage was treated as a purely economic arrangement where emotions, romance, and love have no necessary role. Even today, the transactional mindset is a major cause of compulsory sexuality and rape culture: think of the idea that a man ‘deserves’ sex if he pays for dinner, that a woman’s worth is her purity, that sluts don’t have a right to say no, that men can’t say no to sex (after all, who would refuse getting something valuable for free?).

A much healthier and more feminist approach to non-paid sex, I think, is what writer Thomas Macauley Millar calls the performance model of sexuality:

Because it centers on collaboration, a performance model better fits the conventional feminist wisdom that consent is not the absence of “no,” but affirmative participation. Who picks up a guitar and jams with a bassist who just stands there? Who dances with a partner who is just standing and staring? In the absence of affirmative participation, there is no collaboration. Like the commodity model the performance model implies a negotiation, but not an unequal or adversarial one… Musicians have to choose, explicitly or implicitly, what they are going to play: genre, song, key and interpretation. The palette available to them is their entire skill set… Two musicians steeped in delta blues will produce very different music from one musician with a love for soul and funk and another with roots in hip-hop or 80s hardcore. This process involves communication of likes and dislikes and preferences, not a series of proposals that meet with acceptance or rejection. A performance model is one that normalizes the intimate and interactive nature of sex. The commodity model easily divides sex into good and bad, based on the relative gains from the transaction, mapping closely to conservative Christian sexual mores. Under a performance model, the sexual interaction should be creative, positive and respectful even in the most casual of circumstances. The performance model directly undermines the social construct of the slut…. By centering collaboration and constructing consent as affirmative, the performance model also changes the model for rape. Forcing participation through coercion in a commodity model is a property crime, but in a performance model it is a disturbing and invasive crime of violence, a kind of kidnapping. Imagine someone forcing another at gunpoint to play music with him…. Certainly no one would doubt the coercion merely because the musician performing at gunpoint played music with other people. B.B. King has played with everybody, but no one would argue that he asked for it if someone kidnapped him and made him cut a demo tape with a garage band of strangers.

Have sex you like. Accept gifts graciously if you choose to receive them. Don’t worry about it if you want to fuck someone for their charm or their humor or their kindness or their goofy smile or their six-pack abs, and don’t get a single present out of it. And perhaps find better radical feminists to read.