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Boy/girl sex/work

January 23, 2005

First of all, let me just say that I love me some debate. Over at Feministing.com, there is a post that has garnered a lot of discussion about Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Village Voice piece this week. Jane very eloquently responded to some of the comments and about class and privilege, and of course I have my two cents to add. Well, okay, more than two cents – there are so many comments I want to respond to, this will probably stretch out over several posts.

I wrote a little in my previous post about male clients in the sex industry, and I’d like to expand on that a bit here, with particular attention paid to some questions raised by Katha Pollitt in the comments for the post at Feministing.com, with some personal experience thrown in just to complicate things. Pollitt’s comments are italicized below.

…My question though is this: if it’s okay to be a sex worker, is it okay to be a john? How would you feel if your boyfriend purchased sex, even from a squeaky-clean Ph.d?… I think that in some ways, it’s culturally less acceptable to be a john than it is to be a whore. Especially with the work of notable sex workers like Scarlet Harlot, Annie Sprinkle, and Carol Queen a community and support system has begun to be built for sex workers. Shall we sing the song of sexism? Yes. Female sex workers are of course highly stigmatized – but at the same time there is a piece of sexist society that says of course women are whores, women’s worth is embedded in sex (see a bajillion ads that are not for actual sex but for a mind-numbing array of products). Johns, on the other side of the sexist coin, are stigmatized because they are perceived as being less than manly – duped into paying for what should rightfully be theirs for free.

…Let’s say you discovered that — before you, of course— your bf had slept with prostitutes fairly often. Whenever he was between girlfriends, rather than masturbate or spend the evening trying to meet someone in a bar or read a book or take a cold shower, he would dial an escort service and have them send someone over. He got to have an orgasm in the female body orifice of his choice without all the messy emotional stuff like risking rejection, having to gratify a woman sexually, spend nonsexual time with her, know her real name, promise to call her. She got money. Would you really not have a problem with that? Let’s say, to take care of [another commenter’s] point, that he insists he DOES “respect” prostitutes and would not mind if his sister became one. (Because he is your bf he surely knows not to come out with blatantly double-standard remarks).

And here’s where I complicate things with personal experience that I know is by no means representative of real people other than me and my boyfriend. My boyfriend Dirck has used escort services and has visited asian massage parlors on several occasions – his predilection for handjobs is also how I met my present girlfriend (he was her client and thought we should meet). By chosing to utilize the services of sex workers, Dirck has chosen to do sex “without all the messy emotional stuff,” which has been a solid choice for him, because he has several times mistakenly involved himself with girls with whom undesirable emotional attachments developed. I think that it is ok to want sex, the act, without the emotional attachment of a non-sexual relationship – of course people may disagree with me, which is fine because they do not have to engage in these kinds of relationships. There is an oft-repeated saying about hiring whores – you’re not paying them to stay, you’re paying for them to leave. I think it is preferable to have an emotionally detached session with a provider than it is to get involved in a sexual relationship with someone who may want more emotionally than the guy is willing to provide. I also believe that both men and women can desire a whole spectrum of different relationships – purely sexual, sexual friendship, deeply involved sexual and emotional relationships – within the same lifetime, or even within the same moment.

Being a sex worker in a relationship with a boy who purchases the services of other sex workers is an interesting thing – and something which we’ve talked about endlessly. I don’t mind or judge the fact that Dirck has used these services (on several occasions I’ve done the research for him and found him good massage parlors). We’ve compared notes on our experiences pretty intensely, and one thing we always talk about is whether or not the providers he has visited enjoy their jobs. Dirck has less money to spend on service providers than the men who hire me (we joke a lot about how he couldn’t afford me), so we’ve worried that he’ll be enlisting the services of someone who really doesn’t want to be there or (much worse) has been coerced into their job. There’s no perfect answer to this concern, but let’s just say that he has tipped providers and left without carrying out his mission because he sensed that they were utterly miserable.

In conclusion, for male perspectives on being a client, I recommend the blog Viewing the Local Antiquities as well as Marc Perkel’s really terrific site about hiring escorts, from practical and social perspectives.

Posted by Dacia at January 23, 2005 03:59 AM

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