Exploring the differences
As a sex worker, I’ve pondered about the word ‘Feminism’ and have noticed over the years, since working in the industry, what has come to the surface the most.
At art school, I remember, I was certainly pushed into this ‘Feminism’ corner, and more often than not, it felt more like the ‘naughty’ corner. Why if you make work of a sexual nature, does this squeeze you into a patriarchal feminist movement? is it not enough to be my movement?
I started to research feminism more deeply. I realise I hadn’t heard of Gloria Stienem’s stance ‘For women, the only alternative to being a feminist is being a masochist. I hadn’t ever admired Marlene Dietrich’s man’s suit in the film Morocco, and I certainly hadn’t read Germaine Greeier’s ‘The Female Eunuch’.
How can an intelligent, supposed feminist, self-employed performance artist still choose to be a sex worker?
Trying to decompress from being a ‘nice girl’ – into becoming somebody I could meticulously study, ‘myself’ and the people who naturally came into contact with me.
The definition of feminism
‘A range of social movements, political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal and social equality of the sexes.’
Sex workers across the world are incredibly diverse in ethnicity, race, gender, class, faith, sexuality and disability.
It seems that throughout history, sex workers have had a shocking time of it, they have endured shameful judgements and a lot of misery and to this day, are put on trial. I’m also quite sure they do this to themselves enough. You feel like screaming from the bonobo tree tops, ‘Just let them be!’
Sex workers often live with an unease that others can’t comprehend, and still, they choose this, and to roam freely, wildly, but why?
In my practice, I see a lot of men and hardly any women. A cross-section of successful, complex men, mostly in high earning careers, riding around visiting and acquiring a whole world of different services from female sex workers. The women work from their homes, apartments, dungeons and Airbnb’s, doing what they need to do, to survive.
So why are they sat there before you, and why are we here?
I like to imagine an opposite world where the roles were reversed; a world where successful women drive around to visit male sex workers for their pure gratification and mental stability and to use them as an outlet.
We couldn’t even imagine what level of service they could deliver.
Can you imagine them dusting off their Christian Louboutin 7-inch heels, studying the anatomy insightfully, and understanding that a woman actually has as much erectile tissue as a man and that we can get a boner? Who knew?
These men find time to purchase sex toys for every female orgasmic eventuality, regularly working out, taking account of hairy, wearisome wobbly bits, and of course, surgery. Will they be yearning desperately for the exquisite feeling of giving a woman a full-body orgasm while studying psychological theorists and writers as well as understanding the complex dynamic of S&M. Renting on the hopscotch with the faint melancholy of the word ‘family’, while earning half the salary of their female counterparts. It would never happen, period!
So, my feminist question to you.
Why does it feel that women put in double the effort and live half the pleasure?
A woman’s deep sexual satisfaction is one of my gripes. A woman is capable of achieving 14 different orgasms. Yes, 14!
I watched a documentary called ‘Sexology’ where two friends go on a spiritual journey to find their full body orgasm, gaining insight from sexual experts and tantric masters. Gabrielle says, ‘If I don’t get to experience my full sexual potential when I am hard-wired to feel this deep pleasure before I die, I don’t want to live.’
In the documentary, the sex therapist says, ‘For a woman, letting yourself be penetrated by a man is a deeply intimate, deeply vulnerable, deeply spiritual thing. Before physical penetration, there is emotional penetration, psychic penetration, and spiritual penetration, where we feel a man and how stable he is. To be penetrated, we have to make ourselves soft.’
How many female sex workers negate these facts, with an opening to something ‘other’… and that ‘other’ is a place of immeasurability, and I’m not saying that pleasure can’t be found there, because it can.
I have met some male sex workers, and I didn’t sense that they felt this conundrum. They didn’t have to stretch this impassioned gum that is stuck to every soft, vulnerable gooey part of them. They just seem to ‘get the job done’. There is no female treachery surging inside them.
Women must be so adaptive in this industry, yet there is something that irks me more than other things – the infamous GFE, or ‘Girlfriend Experience’.
I do not and will not understand how a man can think he can pay for a ‘girlfriend experience’ that’s supposed to include French kissing, cuddling, and generally being cutesie, and now there is even a more supposed sincere ‘real’ girlfriend experience where you can pay to be made to feel special and like she is your actual ‘girlfriend’.
The porn star experience is also an interesting conundrum. I knew a woman who was on Porn Hub, many porn sites and very successful, and she said to me she offers her clients the ‘porn star experience’, so I asked, ‘What, you do anal and stuff?’ and she replied no, ‘I’m a porn star so they are paying to have sex with a porn star, aka me!
The HPV virus is on the rise, and now all women are checked for this in their smears, but it’s not so easy to check a man.
There needs to be a safer, cleaner, more sexually and spiritually fulfilling practice like mine and I’m sure, many others. We need to understand sexual pleasure comes in many forms, and we need to pay more respect to ourselves, our respective partners and each other.
For married men, It is cheating, even if we sugarcoat that it isn’t. The desire to use sex workers and sex workers themselves can’t be abolished or reformed; so being more ethical and conscious about the impact of the choices, I believe, is really important.
My Feminist Reform
If I could create a feminist reform, this would be it:
- For people to find novelty, not just in other people’s bodies, but within ourselves, spirituality, to connect more with our emotions and nature, and to widen our intellectual knowledge.
- For (some) men to stop hiding behind mistresses and sex workers, and to stop with the excuses. Own who they are, their desires and sexuality (and educate themselves accordingly).
- In a relationship, explore different roles, sub and dom dynamic, sensory soft domination, blindfold each, take the visual away and make yourselves feel gain. Practice going without, and then you will appreciate what you have much more.
- For women to understand that pegging & anal prostate massage for some men is genuinely pleasurable; and can give many men deep satisfaction.
- For there to be greater understanding of our brains and sexuality. Gender is a spectrum; studies show that 25 per cent have a male brain, 25 per cent female, and 50 per cent androgynous, and the androgynous section have better mental health compared with the other two. It doesn’t mean there is no hope for those at extreme ends of the spectrum, the brain is changeable. The androgynous brain is influenced by genetic and environmental factors; so we need to avoid extreme stereotypes and offer children, partners and ourselves a life of balance.
- To understand it’s ok to be on our own. If a relationship is not serving you or your partner, if you have both given it everything you have for a long period of time, if you are desolate, then find the courage to be on your own.
- To appreciate that we are hardwired to bond and have deep and meaningful relationships, many variations exist within these relationship structures, and I am not opposed to any of them; but we are still in need of this deep intimacy.
- Appreciation that we all have separate networks related to sexual arousal, aggression and fear, and this is shaped by our sexual experiences. In BDSM our experiences begin to fuse them together, and this is where the brain can get confused, neurons that fire together wire together, so aggression triggers arousal, fear, sexual interest, etc. So it is important to counterbalance and harmonise these separate networks and fuse them with connectivity, sensuality and softness.
- People to have a better understanding of and understanding of things like sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the HPV virus.
- For sex work to be decriminalised, (many other countries have already done this). In New Zealand, for example, sex workers have proper employment, legal, health and safety rights, and they don’t have to work alone. They have reported it is easier to refuse clients and report incidents to the police.
- For sex workers to be trained in sex therapy, psychotherapy/therapy, basic psychology and philosophy (accredited courses) as well as first aid and self-protection and have access to protection aids.
- For a large proportion of sex workers to retrain in Tantra/sensual domination/Domination as its safer and cleaner. And for society to understand there can be a genuine therapeutic value to sex work. Pain mixed in with pleasure, vulnerability and sensuality is a heady mix.
- For society to not judge sex workers so harshly and to appreciate these women are more than capable of having deep, sexual and fulfilling relationships.
- To build a strong community between sex workers, to allow them to share resources, ideas and support one another.
- Sex workers to have better technology to screen their clients and the same for clients in regards to sex workers and to get rid of awful sites like UK punting, which is completely degrading.
- For women to be able to transition into and out of sex work for the right reasons and where they can find high earning, sustainable careers.
- For people to understand, they may never be able to buy the sex that you truly need.
- Increase awareness that pleasure can come in the simplest of forms.
“It’s time we understood how sacred the art of sexual pleasure can truly be, a meditation or a communion, a prayer.”
— Charlie Suede