The Work of Sex
a reflection of my short time as a sex worker
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[Parts of this are from my upcoming book! I hope you enjoy it!]
Men like to experience me. They want to fuck me because I’m loud and brash with hips like crescent moons. I have become used to their taking from me, their excavation, and their abandonment after they’ve licked my bones clean. The song “Outta Me” by Bikini Kill, especially the last verse, plays in my head:
And now I am quite sure you want
Everything, everything, everything, everything
Everything, everything, everything, everything
Outta me
The years I lived in Chicago—four total—are filled with countless first (and last) dates, disappointing hookups, and situations that I’m thankful I got out of alive. This is not hyperbole—I dated, unbeknownst to me at the time—some very unsafe and scary people. I made out with one guy I met from OkCupid behind a bar in Wicker Park, and he wanted to come home with me, but I said no. I looked him up online when I got home only to find that there was a “WANTED” poster out for his arrest due to a violent incident (Side note: fuck the police, fuck carcerality–that being said, I will never not be terrified when I read about a white man’s penchant for violence against women).
Another date that I met for a drink asked me a typical first date question, “When’s the last time you had sex?” (This is not, nor should it be, a typical first date question). I answered because I didn’t care, and told him I was in a “situationship” with someone, but I had wanted out of it. The man replied, “You sound like a whore.” I sat up straight and chugged my gin and tonic. He found our waitress and said, “Check please.” I said, “Thanks for the drink,” and got up to leave. He yelled after me, “Yeah, get the fuck out of here!” I ran home weightless and sloshy from the alcohol hoping he wasn’t following me. In another dating experience, I had a two-month fling with a woman twenty years my senior from work who wanted me to move in on the second date (a true blue “U-Haul” lesbian in the wild).
I was all over the place. I was restless. I was looking for love in all the wrong people.
I would often have at least two dates each weekend. Early on, my best friend (and roommate at the time) Audrey would accompany me to a cafe that I would meet a date at. She would sit in the background until I gave her a hidden “all clear” sign. Before other dates, I would leave the guy’s name and number with Audrey (as well as my friend Anju who was living in San Francisco at the time) in case I went missing. This is just what women must do when single and trying to date. I would get a free meal (and drinks) out of it at the very least. I always felt I needed to give something back in return. The transactional sex I had during this time was never for my benefit or pleasure. I was treated as a hypersexual slut, which wasn’t necessarily incorrect, but I resented the men who thought of me as easy. I started to think maybe I should start charging.
For a long time I was anti-sex work and anti-porn. I read many essays by the “radical” anti-pornography/anti-sex work feminist Andrea Dworkin early on. Her work formed much of my initial thinking about sex work, unfortunately. It wasn’t until my grad program in Women’s & Gender Studies that I started to read things by and about sex workers. I began questioning Dworkin’s rigid line of thinking. Charlotte Shane, a former sex worker and writer says about the feminist anti-sex work position:
The end point is men using women’s bodies for their own sexual pleasure, violently or at least callously. Men consume, women are consumed. This engineered universe circumvents consent by erasing the possibility of no; men are never confronted with denial of sexual gratification because there are endless outlets through which they can purchase it. Money, the story goes, gives the men irrevocable sexual license.
Women are always thought of as the ones who are consumed, never the ones who are doing the consuming. This lack of agency and autonomy is dangerous and undermining. There have been countless times where I have felt consumed by men that were fucking me. I mistook consumption for passion. I wasn’t really there. I didn’t think about my own pleasure. I didn’t experience this in the sex work I did, though. Perhaps my feelings would have been different if I engaged in offline sex work. We’re all in the act of consuming each other at different times throughout life.
I was a cam girl and also a findom (financial dominant) briefly. As a poor grad student I needed money, but I also liked the attention. It’s important and necessary for me to note that the form of sex work I did was by choice, not survival. It’s also important to say that the sex work I did was only online. Though all forms of sex work come with risks, doing this work online versus in person allowed me more protection than an escort might have. Furthermore, I had no bad experiences from sex work and it was the one job I had where I felt the most respected and autonomous.
This private corner of my life helped me take back some of the power I had lost in my offline relationships with men. I could be whomever. I wouldn’t say it was empowering—I don’t find any labor to be empowering—but this work was important to me. Being a former sex worker has given me a sense of belonging. In the forward to A Whore’s Manifesto: An Anthology of Writing and Artwork by Sex Workers, poet and former sex worker, Clementine von Radics writes:
We, this sorority I imagine, are a heterogeneous riot of voices, less a community of women and more a network of cis women, trans women, and non-binary queers who perform a stylized version of womanhood for the gratification of clients-mostly cis, straight men of means. There are of course cis and trans men in the industry too, and non-binary people who performed a stylized boyhood.
I’ve always felt safe and comfortable amongst sex workers. This “sorority” is life-long and the networks are endless. Getting hundreds of dollars to call men horrible things was intoxicating. I leaned into cis men’s stereotypes of feminists. I became their “man-hater” and they ate it up. Were they consuming me or was I consuming them?
My time as a sex worker was quite separate from my pleasure, which for me was a good thing. Doing cam work was easier for me than the findom stuff. I liked being watched. I liked being in my own space. I liked doing what I wanted to do. I continued to keep this part of my life private—not even telling friends at the time. Though I felt I belonged amongst sex workers—many of whom were feminists—I didn’t feel this belonging with certain feminists. Even after I had stopped doing this work, I would only covertly mention it in online spaces. I would often allude to it here and there, but I never made a public post proclaiming it. I wasn’t embarrassed. I just didn’t want my family to know. I also knew I would be rejected by feminists and from feminist spaces. These weren’t necessarily people or spaces I wanted to be around, but losing access to anything and the potential for rejection made me nervous. At one point, I was outed by someone who used to work with me on Guerrilla Feminism. They were also a sex worker and because of that, I had mentioned to them that I had done sex work in the past. They later used this against me. They tried to say I was a liar. It didn’t get much traction, but it scared me and was enough to silence me.
I haven’t done sex work in a number of years now, and there are parts of it I miss. Mostly I’m glad to have done it and to be part of this sorority, this group of gloriously messy performers. Sex workers make some of the best comrades.
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A Demonstration of Working-Class Power - Michael Kazin
From secret crushes to self-acceptance – a joyful chronicle of ‘old lesbian’ stories - Meghan McDonough
Conducting a Diversity Audit in an Academic Library on the Psychology, Non-Fiction Collection - Jessica Condlin
Only found out about Tori Amos covering a Kendrick Lamar song this week!
Just a great peace. ❤️your honesty. Never stop.
Loved (and related to) this piece!! Alsooooo. Thank you so much for recommending my work 🥹💛