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Commercial sex trepidations
September 07, 2005
Last night I got an interesting email from Gander, of Goose and Gander:
So, here’s a question since overthinking is your speciality, as it is
mine. My wife, aka Goose, has a friend who’s a stripper and she’s seen her work. Goose thinks she’s extremely hot and a cool person and wants me to go with her to the club and see the friend perform, perhaps even perform for us “in the back.” I have had friends who strip, good friends who stripped through grad school, etc, so the notion isn’t shocking, and my wife and I have a sex life that’s pretty game - but I do not want to go to a strip club and I’m perplexed by my own balking. I tell Goose it’s just not my kink.
But I think part of it is that I am worried that women who strip or do sex work have a very dim view of men and masculinity - that all men are the same, they’re all trying to get a look, or a feel, or get laid. In other words, an attitude that’s not too far different than the men who think women are all the same: they want a relationship, and big dicks, and babies, and a four-bedroom house. I don’t want to be near either of these kinds of people, or support their prejudices. Intellectually - and by reading blogs such as yours - I know the workers in the pleasure trades aren’t so simple, but still….I don’t want to go to a club and be seen as one of those guys, just another hard-on with few hundred bucks to spare. So, here are my questions: Do you see your clients this way? Why or why not? How do you
tell if a client respects/likes/cares about you? Or does it matter?
Definitely a really interesting dilemma - and of course not one that I can give the be-all end-all answer to.
In weird ways, sexuality is a kind of free-wheeling behemoth, meaning that what I or other sex workers, or just folks expressing themselves put out into the world in terms of sexual vibes, image, whatever, can be read, interpreted and appropriated in different ways. For instance, I’m starting to get a small following of glasses fetishists - it wasn’t necessarily my intention to cater to them, but I like my glasses and wear them all the time, so I have glasses fetish fans. This is definitely a pretty banal example - but as for another, creepier one: I have what you might call a ‘nice round ass’ which has attracted a small number of men who write what I consider kinda disturbing emails to me about what they’d like to do to my ass, with lots of violent, painful detail. The point is that just as I can’t entirely control who my fans are and how they perceive me, you as a client can’t control how the girls perceive you. Generally, I have fans and clients who really truly get it and are relieved that someone like me exists; likewise, you’ll have girls who really truly get you and can read you right.
To answer your questions more directly - it does matter if a client likes and respects me (for starters, it makes me a better, kinder and more willing worker). I don’t work in a strip club, and since I’m totally independent I screen my clients myself and am able to weed out the ones I don’t get a good vibe from - most sex workers do this if they are concerned about chemistry and delivering a good session. I can tell if a client likes and respects me the same way I can tell if anyone else feels that way about me - he is kind, listens when I talk and is polite about personal space issues. I don’t see my clients solely as walking hard ons with cash to burn, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I think about the earning potential each client represents. It would be bad business otherwise. It’s important to remember that although a sex worker may enjoy her job, it is a job, and she is there to make money. Although the interaction is different than interactions you might have with other service industry workers (that whole naked thing), it might help you to think about how you interact with, say, someone who cuts your hair. You are paying for a service, but there is no reason why there can’t be a friendly interaction in the midst of it.
I definitely understand that you don’t want to be near the bad things that the sex industry brings out - the gold-digging ladies, the presumptuous guys who think their dick is king - but the truth is that you interact with those people everyday. Those traits are just put into higher relief in a commercial sex setting, partly because the sex industry often allows people to be honest about their desires. Desire is not a pretty thing in all cases, on all people. Very often the sex industry - especially the strip club environment - simplifies sexual longings, at least on the surface. The trick is to find people who enjoy fucking with the norms and expectations, and not to give a shit what other people think.
Posted by Dacia at September 7, 2005 12:04 AM
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Comments
I finally find my voice here. I’ve been reading your fine words for while now but haven’t commented before.
Your response to Gander is an eloquent expression of what my admittedly brief time in the industry revealed. I made some comments on Goose and Ganders blog about this, and to them I would add that each interaction is so very different. I can only agree with you Dacia, when you say ‘The trick is to find people who enjoy fucking with the norms and expectations, and not to give a shit what other people think’.
I admire your dedication to that truth. All the very best.
Posted by: Magdelena at September 7, 2005 03:13 PM
Best answer ever, Dacia.
Great points: - You can’t control who responds when you put yourself out there in a commercial context.
Just because your relationship is commercial doesn’t mean it can’t also be convivial.
Attitudes towards customers or vendors vary widely, with some being outright antagonistic or avaricious but others, maybe most others, being personable.
In these respects small or sole-proprietor commercial sex is no different from other forms of commerce.
You put it very well. Thanks.
figleaf
Posted by: figleaf at September 8, 2005 12:34 PM
Great entry! It is so true how perceptions among sex workers and clients can be so varied.
I especially appreciated your point on how you cannot control how someone will perceive you or your work. My favourite one for me was an email I got regarding a foot fetish shoot I did. These were shots of my feet and nothing else. Some one wrote ins aying how turned on I was in the set. I could have been knitting or doing a crossword off camera (I was likely just chatting with my husband) but he saw my feet as reflecting something very different indeed.
Posted by: Seska at September 8, 2005 06:33 PM
Oh yeah, the glasses are TOTALLY hot. Said as a midwestern boy who grew up fantasizing about Greenwich Village intellectual girls.
Anyway, I go to strip clubs about once every other year, so not exactly an expert here, but as it happens I was at one recently, which happened to have a swinger’s party going on in the main room, relegating the strippers to a tiny cage in a side room. As a result, the place was dead, even the few guys who were there seemed blase about the tits and ass on display, and I felt sorry for the gals, so, since no one was tipping, as soon as one came on who had some personality (the thousand-yard stare some of them have is a big turn off, but I appreciate any gal who seems to be giving her all; also the fact that she wasn’t teenage-boy-skinny, I remember when strippers looked like girls) I made a point of going up there early and giving a $5, which made me John D. Rockefeller in that place that night.
Well, though money quickly got me two gals sitting next to me (including the one I’d tipped), the more important thing I offered was some words of commiseration for the dead night they were having and how hard it was to make a living on a night like this. In no time I had two strippers talking about the biz a mile a minute, giving me all the inside dish (some quite hilarious) on the club and every other club in town. Fifteen minutes later one of them was telling me her whole life story (not especially traumatic, and I admired her determination to make a living and get ahead), and we had a nice conversation for quite a little while (conversation defined as “woman talks, man listens and makes sympathetic noises now and then”). I’m making a little fun, but I really liked the gal, she had a good attitude and I think she’s going to get ahead in the long run.
Frankly it was a little weird, after being the kindly uncle for half an hour with this young woman hanging on me and chattering away, to end up the conversation by taking a lap dance and having her grind my hardon and so on. But there was nothing unnatural about that for her; she was there to do her job and I was there to contribute to her college fund, so we both did what we did.
Anyway, I guess my point is: strippers are working gals, some are cynical about the men on the other side, just as some men look at them as meat, others are there to put on a show and if you’re a real person they’ll be a real person too. Doesn’t mean she’s going to go out with you but you can relate to them on a human level just like you can with a waitress or a stranger on the bus, and maybe have a nice little conversation/human interaction (complete with lap dance) made possible in part by the fact that you are strangers who won’t see each other elsewhere, most likely. What they’re not, most of the time, is hapless victims whom you’re exploiting, or hardedged burnouts who despise you for exploiting them. So relax and enjoy the show, and treat her as a professional whose work you enjoyed.
Posted by: Mike at September 8, 2005 11:15 PM
A very thought-provoking post!
But this perplexes me, from Goose’s original thoughts: they want a relationship, and big dicks, and babies, and a four-bedroom house.
…Wait, did I miss a cultural shift? (Seriously, are girls not allowed to want these things anymore? anxious)
Posted by: emma at September 9, 2005 10:43 AM
Emma - not all girls want those things, but rock on to the girls who do.
Posted by: Dacia at September 9, 2005 03:22 PM
You all make good points but did anyone else read the part where he said the stripper was a friend of his wife? That totally changes the context. You’d get pseudo-special treatment, analogous to being someone’s plus-one at a concert. She won’t see you as a customer, but instead as a friend.
Posted by: Will at September 11, 2005 11:29 AM
