legitimate reasons for doing so. Writer and prostitute Charlotte Shane terms this “unenthusiastic consent,” a flip of the recent feminist call to demand “enthusiastic consent,” a “yes means yes” to fight for alongside “no means no.” Shane isn’t saying yes means no, but rather, as she writes at the blog
Tits and Sass
, “There is a stark difference between the times I’ve agreed to (undesired) sex with clients, and the times I haven’t agreed to certain types of sex with clients. Labeling all of those experiences ‘rape’ erases the truth, my reality, and my agency.” We have an understanding now, through the advocacy of feminist antirape activists, that even when our consent is violated, we can feel (despite ourselves?) pleasure. The corollary, then, is that pleasure isn’t necessary for one to have offered consent, and the absence of pleasure should not be construed as a withdrawal of consent.
If rape isn’t just bad sex, just bad sex—even at work—isn’t rape.
But maybe it’s a distraction to talk about something like consent to sex at all when we talk about sexual labor. There is a whole matrix of consent to consider: Will the sexual labor performed put one at risk of law enforcement? At a health risk? At risk for being outed? It’s those conditions that deserve as much if not more of our concern when considering consent, not just consent to a sex act. Focusing on consent to sex may do more to perpetuate confusion and marginalization than clarifying sex workers’ power and control at work.
Isolating sex workers’ consent to only sexual consent is used to diminish their choices, not enhance them. Sex workers, morethan any other, are expected to justify their labor as a choice, as if the choice to engage in a form of labor is what makes that labor legitimate. An even more insidious double standard is that sex workers must prove they have made an
empowered
choice, as if empowerment is some intangible state attained through self-perfection and not through a continuous and collective negotiation of power. These demands to demonstrate one’s empowerment only reproduces a victim class among sex workers, all of whom are already perceived to be disempowered. It’s as true of sex workers as it is for nurses or teachers (or journalists or academics): Dwelling on the individual capacity for empowerment does little to help uncover the systemic forces constraining workers’ power, on the job and off.
I’ve “sold my body” to countless men yet I still have it right here on the couch with me. Odd that.
—@AnarchaSxworker
Following from these myths—that to be objectified is to reduce the self, and that sex for pay is indistinguishable from rape—are the two common and contradictory views of what a sex worker sells: either her body or herself, which is most commonly applied to sex workers who offer a physical service, traditional straight sex in particular; or a shoddy approximation of real sex, making her a fake.
Drawing from over a decade of ethnographic study, sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein identifies what sex workers offer as bounded intimacy, a service that can contain a range of labor, from the physical to the emotional. Some sexworkers, particularly those whose service allows for extended conversation with customers (whether over an hour-long hotel encounter, a webcam chat, or in VIP rooms), may negotiate their work quite differently than those who prefer to focus on the physical labor of sex, which can be a more straightforward service. Sex workers don’t all find the same physical sex acts equally intimate: a blow job, a massage, a strap-on ass fuck, a kiss.
That sex workers are continually negotiating varying levels of intimacy should be proof enough that this is labor rather than selling one’s body. But that the intimacy itself can be constructed might seem like evidence that what’s on offer can’t be real. Still, we judge sex workers’ authenticity by much higher
Tits and Sass
, “There is a stark difference between the times I’ve agreed to (undesired) sex with clients, and the times I haven’t agreed to certain types of sex with clients. Labeling all of those experiences ‘rape’ erases the truth, my reality, and my agency.” We have an understanding now, through the advocacy of feminist antirape activists, that even when our consent is violated, we can feel (despite ourselves?) pleasure. The corollary, then, is that pleasure isn’t necessary for one to have offered consent, and the absence of pleasure should not be construed as a withdrawal of consent.
If rape isn’t just bad sex, just bad sex—even at work—isn’t rape.
But maybe it’s a distraction to talk about something like consent to sex at all when we talk about sexual labor. There is a whole matrix of consent to consider: Will the sexual labor performed put one at risk of law enforcement? At a health risk? At risk for being outed? It’s those conditions that deserve as much if not more of our concern when considering consent, not just consent to a sex act. Focusing on consent to sex may do more to perpetuate confusion and marginalization than clarifying sex workers’ power and control at work.
Isolating sex workers’ consent to only sexual consent is used to diminish their choices, not enhance them. Sex workers, morethan any other, are expected to justify their labor as a choice, as if the choice to engage in a form of labor is what makes that labor legitimate. An even more insidious double standard is that sex workers must prove they have made an
empowered
choice, as if empowerment is some intangible state attained through self-perfection and not through a continuous and collective negotiation of power. These demands to demonstrate one’s empowerment only reproduces a victim class among sex workers, all of whom are already perceived to be disempowered. It’s as true of sex workers as it is for nurses or teachers (or journalists or academics): Dwelling on the individual capacity for empowerment does little to help uncover the systemic forces constraining workers’ power, on the job and off.
I’ve “sold my body” to countless men yet I still have it right here on the couch with me. Odd that.
—@AnarchaSxworker
Following from these myths—that to be objectified is to reduce the self, and that sex for pay is indistinguishable from rape—are the two common and contradictory views of what a sex worker sells: either her body or herself, which is most commonly applied to sex workers who offer a physical service, traditional straight sex in particular; or a shoddy approximation of real sex, making her a fake.
Drawing from over a decade of ethnographic study, sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein identifies what sex workers offer as bounded intimacy, a service that can contain a range of labor, from the physical to the emotional. Some sexworkers, particularly those whose service allows for extended conversation with customers (whether over an hour-long hotel encounter, a webcam chat, or in VIP rooms), may negotiate their work quite differently than those who prefer to focus on the physical labor of sex, which can be a more straightforward service. Sex workers don’t all find the same physical sex acts equally intimate: a blow job, a massage, a strap-on ass fuck, a kiss.
That sex workers are continually negotiating varying levels of intimacy should be proof enough that this is labor rather than selling one’s body. But that the intimacy itself can be constructed might seem like evidence that what’s on offer can’t be real. Still, we judge sex workers’ authenticity by much higher
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