There’s been some good and thoughtful reporting over the Rentboy arrests over the last few days. From Graeme Reid at Human Rights Watch:
Rentboy.com connects male escorts to clients in the same way that Uber does for transport, or Airbnb does for accommodation. There are no middlemen, thus affording users control and autonomy over the services brokered through the website. The website connects consenting adults. None of the government statements about the raid have alleged any coercion or involvement of underage persons.
It is hard to see the harm done by Rentboy.com, but it’s easy to see the harm done by the raid on society at large. The criminalization of voluntary, consensual sexual relations among adults is incompatible with the rights to personal autonomy and privacy – internationally recognized human rights that everyone, including individuals engaged in sex work, is entitled to. Criminalization creates barriers for those engaged in sex work to exercise basic rights and to seek access to justice, health care, and other available services.
From Melissa Gira Grant at Vice:
One of the Rentboy employees arrested was their social media coordinator. Another staff member’s tweets are quoted.
“Escorts are not just sex objects,” staffer Michael Belman is quoted as saying. “They are real people performing a valuable service.” He was also arrested on Tuesday, released on a $200,000 bond.
There are no future court dates set. Local news have secured their gay escort headlines, their perp walks, and their government-commissioned account of explicit homosexual sex. One defendant, according to advocates in contact with him, remains in custody as of this publication, though it is not clear why. Those who advertised on Rentboy.com are now left potentially exposed, their listings in government custody, and for now are largely out of work. Rentboy was their hiring hall, a community center, one place where advertisers could manage their work and find one another.
Which is why, I think, it felt particularly jarring to see this piece on sugar dating by Taffy Brodesser-Akner over at GQ making the rounds yesterday! It is, at times, quite funny – I don’t think much of the “Regular Woman™ pays a short visit to talk to sex workers in a strip club/brothel/escort service, is astonished that some people pay for sex” genre, but as an individual entry in a relatively played-out series, it’s entertaining and well-written. And yet it has not sat well with me. There’s no there there.
Rich and Ilene met and had sex at his apartment that very night. But their arrangement seems more like a father-daughter relationship than anything else. She needs an interview outfit? They’ll go shopping for it together, and of course he’ll buy it. I ask if she realizes that one day she won’t be 20, and one day she’ll want to buy something without having to ask for it. She shrugs and says yes. He sighs. He didn’t realize they were going to be this honest with me.
This seems awfully shallow and insulting to me, asking a woman if she is aware that someday she will grow older than the age she is now. Probably most of the women involved in sugar dating make purchases they do not have to get permission for, and are able to plan ahead for them! It is not a very interesting or thoughtful question to ask.
Moments in the article are incisive and funny and made me laugh:
Thurston wanted sex, and he wanted eagerness about the sex. So one day when he was at the gym, he saw this old guy with a very pretty young lady, and when Thurston expressed confusion to his trainer, his trainer explained that the geezer was her sugar daddy and that the young fawn was his sugar baby.
Well, you could barely keep Thurston on a lat-press machine after that.
But it’s less funny to see that sort of blunt-force mockery turned on to people like “Kitten,” who “left home when she was 18 after a fight with her family over a boyfriend, and she wasn’t welcome back, not even after the relationship ended. She wound up in a program for homeless youth and lived in a shelter” or “Ilene,” who “who ran off from her controlling parents.” (Also, Ilene is now 20 years old and she’s a registered nurse and happily engaged to be married to someone she met through sugar dating; Ilene is efficient and gets things done and I would be very interested in reading a thoughtful, sincere article about her.)
Taffy’s defense, such as it is, is that since the women/man in question don’t refer to themselves as “prostitutes,” it’s fair game to gawk and make fun of them, which I strongly disagree with!
There are certain hallmarks to the “You Won’t Believe What People Do When They Receive Money For Sex” genre, and this piece hits a lot of them:
- I was expecting [cheesy, twenty-years-out-of-date cliché] but found [actual human beings]: “There’s not even a measly garter belt or gross double entendre in sight. Instead, I get Rich and Ilene, both smiley, she with her freckles and dimples, he with his goofy laugh”
- My work is real work, sex work is for lazy/entitled/maladjusted people who can’t cope with an actual job: “She looks across the table at me, the dummy who had to reschedule on her twice because of all the work I juggle, who has spent far more time and energy writing this story than a commensurate amount of blow jobs would require.”
- The things these freaky people do, I had no idea they did them, and I feel qualified to describe the nature of their work and lives after spending a few hours among them: “I’m naive in general, but at this point in the story, I’m so much less naive than I’ve ever been…It’s been a long time since I began this story, and I have been exposed to no small amount of sociopathy, delusion, denial, and misogyny in the reporting of it.”
I don’t doubt that Taffy experienced a lot of misogyny and awful behavior, and it’s her descriptions of the sometimes-clueless, sometimes-selfish, often-entitled sugar daddies in question that often ring truest and made me laugh. But she focuses on personalities at the expense of systems, and never goes beyond the premise that people who get involved in sex work are stupid and shallow and unable to think for themselves. And I’ve seen that article many times before, and I’m not particularly interested in reading it over and over as new generations of middle-class women “discover” the fact that a lot of women and queer people and men exchange sex or dancing or videos of themselves or their underwear for money and plane tickets and food and gifts.
I can understand being uncomfortable with the idea and some of the realities of sex work; I have been uncomfortable about it myself, at various times in my life. But I don’t believe that the discomfort of someone who is not involved in sex work in any meaningful way ought to dictate the conversation. Or even be a part of it! You can just feel some discomfort and, you know, sit with that in a quiet room for a while, and then carry on with your life.
And I think there’s plenty to be said about how sugar dating, and other types of “soft” sex work play into new economic realities after the last recession – I’d love to read something that investigates what Reid brought up at HRW, how sites like Rentboy and Seeking Arrangements mirror the kind of weird, “everyone’s an employee” cultures of Uber and Airbnb. And, oh gosh, I absolutely believe there’s plenty to be said about how sex workers (male and female) have to manage male/client entitlement in an industry where they’re also often facing the threat of arrest or public exposure. I just don’t think this article accomplished any of those things!
Monday: She met the guy at The Charles Hotel and went back to his place. She gave him a blow job, and then she fell asleep for two hours. He woke her up to drive her home and said, “ ‘Oh, I have like $500. Is that okay?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah. Yes, that’s fine. Yeah, that’s great. Thank you.’ He’s like, ‘Okay. Here.’ Like, ‘I’ll talk to you soon.’ ”
Tuesday: She met another guy at the local seafood shack for shrimp and margaritas. They went back to her place, and they both tried on her clothes and she gave him a blow job. He left her $400. He’s married, but something something something—Tigress never got the full story. She still sees this guy.
Wednesday: This guy was really old, maybe 75. After sushi and a Viagra, they went to his house. He lay down on an ottoman and asked her to get on top. Eventually he had convulsions that were not unlike an orgasm, but something was off. He told her to leave. The next day he texted her from the hospital and told her he was breaking it off because she was “too crazy” for him in bed. $500.
Keep in mind it’s only Wednesday.
On the one hand, this is written in a really effective, humorous style. I get the point, which is “this job is unpredictable and very different from my, the author’s, job!” On the other hand, it boils down to A woman did her job for three days in a row, with a side of can you imagine giving two blow jobs to two different men in as many days? Which I imagine some of us can!
Tigress thinks she’s doing the smallest amount of work for the most amount of money, but if you talk to her, there is something off there, something not right in her bragging and eagerness.
I think that what is “off” there is that the reporter is approaching her subject with contempt prior to investigation. She doesn’t value the work that “Tigress” does and thinks she’s incapable of making the right decisions for herself, and she’s not truly listening to her. What’s “off” there is the whole conversation. What’s “off” there is everything.
There’s something especially disheartening about this piece coming on the heels of the Rentboy arrests, a little over a year after the raid on MyRedBook – when the people who work in the sex industry are facing arrest and loss of income and safety, it doesn’t feel very funny to read about how “Kitten Babypuss” looks like a “very beautiful Bratz doll.”
Tags: gq, Melissa Gira Grant, news, rentboy, sex work, sugar dating
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But I don’t believe that the discomfort of someone who is not involved in sex work in any meaningful way ought to dictate the conversation. Or even be a part of it!
YES. I wish that we could all acknowledge that, much like writing about other marginalized groups, stories about sex work should be told by sex workers.
I definitely got distracted by how funnily this was written, because I was sitting there wishing I could write like that, and I like looking at other people’s sex lives because I’m nosy like that. But yeah, her conclusion felt strange to me based on everything she had written already. I think there is something in how many of the people she interviewed insist what they are doing is not sex work, and I would love to explore the biases there, but at the end she seems to say that it doesn’t work the way the participants think it does and I’m not sure that’s the case? Like, the whole point is things are laid out and both people are agreeing to this? And everyone seems to be doing fine/stopped participating if they weren’t doing fine?
Yeah, I too got distracted by how really well this was written (in the sense of technically well written and funny, not in the sense of “a good thing to write that takes a good position on a complicated subject). It’s possible to be funny and also harmful. Her conclusion definitely didn’t seem to fit with the way many of these women saw their work and their lives. I would love to see a piece that really delves into how women in these relationships distinguish “getting paid for sex” vs “being a sex worker”, or using the term sex worker or prostitute for themselves, and what those terms really mean to them.
I read this pretty differently than Mallory primarily because Taffy talked often about how insistent everyone was that this wasn’t sex work: I came away thinking a lot about that distinction- it seemed to me that the author thought pretty highly of sex workers and that they are honest about what they do, and what she disliked about this was all of the over-justification and defensiveness, the refusal to acknowledge the complete lack of respect these men have for these women.
It feels deeply disingenuous to me to claim that this wasn’t sex work because the women and man she spoke to don’t refer to themselves as “prostitutes.” To begin with, there are plenty of reasons not to want to refer to your work as sex work – not least because you can get arrested for it. I saw absolutely no sign in this article that the author thinks highly of sex workers. What part gave you that impression?
That’s totally fair, and re-skimming this while thinking about that definitely changed how I thought about it. The part I was thinking about was this:
“Now, are you ready for something sweet? He could see himself marrying her! And this, he says, is what makes sugar dating different from prostitution. “I don’t have an extensive track record with escorts, prostitutes, or hookers,” says Scrooge. “But I’ve done it a couple of times in foreign countries. And it’s just the biggest turnoff you’ve ever seen. It’s like all business. They don’t smile.” With sugar babies, no one’s on the clock. There’s hugging and kissing, laughing and talking.
With sugar babies, he says, it’s almost like a real person who actually loves you.”
Which I read as a critique of him for seeing himself as “above” prostitutes, and deluding himself for believing this was somehow superior. But that definitely doesn’t actually mean that she treats these women with respect.
I think if you are a sex-worker, then you might have pretty strong feelings about people who are doing what you see as a form of sex-work but insisting that it’s not sex-work because sex-work is stigmatised. But if you’re not a sex-worker, it’s a bit rich to go around trying to police that distinction. It’s like a white person insisting to a mixed-race person that they ought to be proud to call themselves black and that the only reason they don’t is because of self-hatred or something. Hell, it might even be true, but it is in NO WAY your job to decide that,
This is brilliant; you are brilliant (obviously). This just hits every.single.thing I find repellent about articles like the on in GQ. I don’t mind reading about sex work – the Toast and the Butter have run some thoughtful, worthwhile pieces about and by sex workers. What I mind are articles that not only seem surprised by “discovering” what “really” goes on, but still degrade sex workers (and all participants in sex work) as less-than, as Other. Even after finding out there are real people in these stories, the authors never seem to view them OR treat them any differently than they would have before. It’s just a series of things and viewpoints that continue to rub me the wrong way.
Whew, that was a long-winded way to say thank you for writing this!
Because to some people it’s a very fine line between the very real world of abuse/trafficking and empowered sex work. But I would argue that for many that line is rock-solid, and in fact that it’s mostly sex workers who are advocating for the regulations that would combat the abuse.
I completely agree. Both are important stories to tell, and the work that sex workers do to advocate for regulations/humane treatment should be highlighted more often than it is.
Isn’t it too bad that this line of thinking doesn’t apply to other conversations?
If you say: “Because some sex work is done through forced prostitution and human trafficking, we should ban all sex work for all people just to be safe.”
You should also argue that: “Because some violent crimes are committed with illegally obtained firearms, we should ban all guns for all people just to be safe.“
Also “Because some retail jobs are horribly exploitative, we should ban all retail jobs.” Instead of, you know, improving industry standards and oversight.
in fact, maintaining blanket criminalization makes those lines much blurrier, as genuinely consenting adults are denied legal rights within their field of employment
In a recent interview I heard with Mistress Matisse, a pro dom, she made a really good point that there are ALREADY laws against human trafficking and sexual assault, the two things most people say they’re trying to combat when legislating against sex work. She argued that there doesn’t need to be a separate “sex work” category on top – at least not how there is now – because it ends up hurting, not helping, actual sex workers, like the RentBoy arrests did.
I read the Taffy story yesterday and finished it pretty disgusted. Why the demeaning names for the women? Why the contempt for someone who finds they have a marketable skill and uses it to make money? I feel like there was a lot of sad, internalized misogyny being regurgitated onto the page.
Personally, it made me think I could have been in a much better place financially if I had used my 20s more like “Kitten” or Ilene. Why not get paid for something I was already doing?
“Why the demeaning names for women?”
Not to be catty (but oh what the hell): especially when the author’s actual name is Taffy.
I just – what is even the point of Taffy’s article? That sex work exists and is different from other jobs? That, like just about every other industry or interaction involving men and women and their bodies it’s fraught and potentially exploitative? I’m also a bit of prude, but who gives a shit what I think? I would argue that it takes a great deal of intelligence, of the practical kind, to navigate the sex work world in a successful, safe, and empowering way.
“and is different from other jobs”
It’s possible I’m just feeling especially cynical about my office job right now, but it seems like doing something you’re good at (whether you enjoy it or not) in order to get money to buy things you need is… just… normal… capitalism.
Plus any woman making money by giving blow jobs deserves every penny. There’s a reason they’re called “jobs”. They’re hard work, repetitious and boring, and often times you’ll find yourself staring at the wall wishing you were anywhere else.
You’ve hit it on the nail there!
Ok but, that was a humor piece.
OK but, you can still miss the mark with humor.
Ok, but I found the target of her humor to be women who are using sex work to escape homelessness and painful family situations to be in poor taste, played-out, predictable, and actively harmful, given the current climate for people who do this kind of work. And there’s absolutely nothing about humor that means it cannot be criticized! What an odd idea, to think that a joke cannot have a flaw.
This this this this this this
It’s just a joke… you shouldn’t take it so seriously… Um, comedy exists in and comes out of society and reflects and reinforces REAL views and attitudes that impact the treatment of REAL people–people without privilege, if the comedy is stupid and lacks a background of reflection and compassion.
Like, how is this not obvious? I don’t dislike and criticize offensive comedy because I’m trying to be all intellectual or superior. I don’t enjoy it because it’s not funny, and I criticize it because it’s harmful to people.
People telling me I’m overthinking it makes me want to do… flawed things to them.
See also: Blackface.
“What an odd idea, to think that a joke cannot have a flaw.”
Oooh, I want to make signs that say this and weld them onto the walls in every comedy club.
“Ok, but I found the target of her humor to be women who are using sex work to escape homelessness and painful family situations to be in poor taste, played-out, predictable, and actively harmful, given the current climate for people who do this kind of work.”
THIS. Perfectly, beautifully said.
I read the sugar dating piece yesterday and definitely found parts of it amusing. Particularly, as you mentioned, the parts where the author’s mockery is aimed at the “sugar daddies.” (The pseudonym Thurston von Moneybags is hilarious to me.) But I agree that the author seemed to approach the entire situation with a level of contempt that is Not Cool. I definitely think that this sort of “soft sex work” makes it even more difficult to see where the line is between people being empowered vs being exploited. But instead of really exploring that, the author sort of just goes to “these women are so dumb they think that they are empowered when they are actually being exploited but I guess if they feel empowered it doesn’t matter?”
Thank you! This has been all over my Twitter, shared especially by people whose opinions I tend to respect. I was beginning to wonder if I had missed something when I stopped reading part of the way through — so thanks for this.
Attention, Men of the Internet, heed this: “You can just feel some discomfort and, you know, sit with that in a quiet room for a while, and then carry on with your life.”
Well, also, you know, women. Given this is a critique of privileged women acting out their privilege on less privileged women, deflecting that as if it’s something is only men do is a little bit gross.
Obviously, but it doesn’t scan as well, and since this is the center of misandry on the internet…
The line was originally written directed toward a woman, so I don’t think KatPruska’s comment was denying that women do it. I think she was just noting that it’s also quite applicable to men, in addition to the author of the article.
My main takeaway from the GQ piece was utter contempt for the spoiled manchildren profiled therein, who apparently believe that they should just get whatever they want if they throw enough money at the problem, but I’ll read it again with this perspective in mind.
This is also my takeaway. Granted, I’m friendly with Taffy, so I’m reading with the presumption that she’s not an asshole, and I may not see what comes off the page for those who have no direct evidence of that. But I don’t read it as being critical of the sex workers–I just see her highlighting, with the perspective of a woman who has at least a decade on all of them, that this is something individual (conventionally attractive) women can keep doing until they’re maybe 30, and men can keep doing until they die.
Kate, can you really read sentences like “Tigress thinks she’s doing the smallest amount of work for the most amount of money, but if you talk to her, there is something off there, something not right in her bragging and eagerness” (TIGRESS and KITTEN, really?) and come away convinced that she’s not trying to put them down? I’m genuinely confused. The entire article is clearly coded, with its mention of “fake fur” and “glitter makeup” and “writing this article was way harder than blow jobs,” to make it clear that she thinks they’re hollow, facile, empty, and fake, and that her job is real and theirs is bullshit. Everything about this was classic “sex workers aren’t women the way I am a woman,” and it was spelled out incredibly clearly.
I believe that in the context of a million articles that have been written along those lines, this reads to a lot of sensitive (and I mean that in the good way–as in caring and thoughtful) people like it’s just one more. On that level, it’s a clear failure. I am seeing from the response that it’s hurting people, and that’s never good.
Do I actually think Taffy was contemptuous of her subjects? Still no. “There’s something off there” is the kind of vague device reporters use all the time when they feel that someone isn’t telling the whole truth. “Tigress” could very well be doing the best job for her right now, and still come across like she’s protesting too much when she talks about it. That’s worth noting. The nicknames are meant to evoke stereotypes I think she was actually trying (and failing, evidently) to upend. And I genuinely do not believe Taffy was aiming for “My work is better and more important than giving blow jobs.”
I do believe she’s contemptuous of the Daddies, and honestly, so am I. To me, the point of this article is to illustrate the difference between the Babies—practical and ambitious young women doing a job—and the Daddies, who want to believe their money is buying them a companion who actually cares about their narcissistic droning AND their boners. If you look at the catalog of “Tigress’s” dates through that lens, keeping in mind the stated desire of some Daddies for “no professionals,” you see that fantasy bubble bursting. It’s not an indictment of Tigress’s choices, although I grant that many people will take it that way, and it would be a better article if Taffy made it explicit that that’s NOT the point, or otherwise handled that differently.
I mean, I don’t know if I’m reading it right, either—I would have to ask Taffy. But if you start from the premise that this is not a thoughtless hit piece on sex workers, it reads very differently. Obviously, not everyone’s going to start from that point, or should be expected to in a culture that typically heaps scorn on sex workers, so again, I take your overall points. I mostly just bristle at the authoritative statements about Taffy’s state of mind.
Kate, thanks for writing back so thoughtfully! I always appreciate hearing your perspective. I could only make statements about her state of mind based on her writing – I think she made it very clear, what she was thinking, but I don’t know her personally, as you do.
I think Mallory is right about some of the coded language, but the last two paragraphs are a pretty strong indictment of the system itself, not the individual participants.
I read a good part of this (not all of it) as an indictment of the “just two feely consenting parties to an economic transaction, nothing to see here” line of thinking. There’s still “something to see here” even if you believe (as I do) that the transaction itself should be 100% legal.
This. It also seems like a lot of people, with the best intentions, seem to want the narrative of sex work to be driven by the sex workers most strongly defending it (and those fortunate enough to be in a position to vocalise this), and those most at risk or who’ve since left are disregarded as not being feminist enough, or not privileging the right others have to a sex life.
>>My main takeaway from the GQ piece was utter contempt for the spoiled manchildren profiled therein, who apparently believe that they should just get whatever they want if they throw enough money at the problem
…
I think this is also a problematic way to write about sex-work! Stuff about sex-work by non-sex-workers frequently focuses on the author’s discomfort with the consumers/punters, which is another way of decentering sex-workers when they are actually the least powerful and most marginalised people in that situation. I don’t think that is a “good” or more ethically acceptable way to write about sex-workers.
(Not that the sugar babies necessarily we themselves as sex-workers, but I think this article is very definitely written in the long tradition of tropes-about-sex-work-and-sex-workers.)
Right, and also? Depending on the consumer and the ethics and all, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with explicitly paying for either a) sex that you know will be NSA and largely consequence-free*, or b) someone to pretend they care about your feelings, your day, etc. I mean, at least a sugar baby/prostitute offering a “girlfriend experience”/etc knows what they’re getting into up front, and that’s one less person forcing Pretending to Give a Damn About Your Life into the unofficial job description of their local bartender/hairdresser/etc, hopefully.
I kind of like commercializing the pretense of caring about random dude’s feelings. It may lead to fewer random dudes expecting that sort of shit for free. (q.v. article on unpaid emotional labor.)
* The old saying is that you don’t pay a prostitute to fuck you, you pay her to leave afterwards.
Anyone else find the article had a really fucked-up baseline opinion on relationships in general? I’m talking about how the author insists to Kitten that she and her husband’s relationship is most certainly not mutually beneficial (???) and the difference in portrayal of Kitten and Tigress vs. Ilene (obvious in naming convention) as though dating leading to matrimony is the only moral form of dating.
I mean, just on top of all the misguided and damaging rhetoric about sex work.
That was so weird, the idea that their relationship was just based on love — I don’t know what love means in the absence of making the other person’s life better.
it also bugged me that while all four interviewed (kitten, tigress, john, and ilene) expressed a sense of personal agency and awareness in making the decision to get involved through SeekingArrangement, the only one whose sense of agency she didn’t seem to undercut was John’s. and that her general referencing of the concept stuck to rigid gendering.
Absolutely. I think this is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s deal. She wrote this piece on Taylor Swift’s passive-aggressiveness (which I agreed with in general–revenge songs are awfully passive aggressive!), but ended it by praising Swifty because “passive-aggressive revenge for high school slights is something we ALL want.” Um, no. Some of us are just fine with expressing ourselves and moving on in a healthy fashion.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/22/rev…
Ugh, yes, that last line about Tigress was particularly galling. “Well she SAYS she’s happy but I don’t know, I looked in her eyes and thought maybe I could read her mind.”
“You can just feel some discomfort and, you know, sit with that in a quiet room for a while, and then carry on with your life.”
This is just, across the board, really a good point. No one’s asking everyone to be comfortable with every sex practice/lifestyle/activity/food choice/whatever under the sun. Everyone has some things that give them a visceral “oh ewww no” response and that’s ok! I just wish more people would realize that unless someone’s getting hurt by it or you’re being asked to do it you should just keep that discomfort to yourself and not impose it on other people.
You know, not too long ago I was watching something about the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, and one of the strikers was saying that his most powerful realization during the process was that you don’t have to be somebody’s friend or agree with them all the time in order to march in solidarity with them. In fact that’s the whole point– you can’t decide how to treat people just by looking out for your buddies or for people who are just like you. You have to say no, EVERYONE deserves to be treated by certain standards, an injury to one is an injury to all, simply because we are all human.
And I guess that’s how I feel about sex work. It’s one of those things that just fundamentally doesn’t sit well with me, and I’m not sure I can get down with the idea that it’s empowering (I have misgivings about any argument that rests on “empowerment”, but that’s another story). But you know what? That does not in anyway supercede the idea that EVERYONE should have the right to work under safe and fair conditions and should be able to speak up for their own needs.
If you read what sex-work activists say, they tend to roll their eyes VERY hard at the idea of “empowerment”, except to point out the very obvious thing that having money is way more empowering than not having money. The “empowerment” thing is mostly a pop-culture red herring. As you say, whether someone finds their job “empowering” is not relevant to whether they deserve to practise it as safely as possible, and that means decriminalisation and rights.
Yeah, it’s easy to get caught up in the hand-wringing about “is it good for women?” But okay, let’s talk about what we know for sure is good for women– being able to pay the bills, not getting arrested, etc.
This.
If “Would you do this without a paycheck?” was the benchmark of nonexploitative work, ninety percent of everything would be exploitative.* Despite what grotesque HR people like to make us believe, practically nobody thinks their job is fun. “Has occasional bright spots and isn’t Godawful most of the time” is the best most of us, sex workers and data entry folks alike, ever do.
And “Could I personally endure this job?” isn’t a useful metric either. There are people who live with and even enjoy–to the extent above–all sorts of things, even customer service, and I don’t understand it, but there it is. And frankly, if safety wasn’t an issue and I had to choose between food service/retail and sex work?
Well, I can make rent by dealing with one asshole or fifty.
* And there’s an argument that ninety percent of capitalism is exploitative; I am sympathetic to that argument; but the solution to that is a mincome and universal health care, not shaming certain kinds of work.
I think what struck me most about that one (aside from the happy couple who are going to get married but still used as an example of how this site is a network of mutual predation?) was this line:
“For Tigress, the question is not whether she’s a prostitute. It’s whether the rest of us are idiots.”
And the whole article is written like, “Can you imagine, a prostitute who thinks that your job is stupid? She FUCKS for MONEY!”
Except, actually that seems like a pretty legitimate position for this lady to take. ARE the rest of us idiots?
Also “there’s no one to root for in this story”, but, like, everyone seems fine? I guess I don’t really think that needing to have control over the life of a much younger women in order to be sexually aroused is the healthiest way to be in the world, it’s probably pretty bad, but on the other hand…I mean, the women who are getting the money for it really seem to know what they’re doing, they seem as consenting as they can get, soooo.
Frankly I just don’t have the stamina.
It honestly doesn’t even seem like that much work! Tigress apparently got like three grand for a couple blowjobs and a dude falling a sleep while she straddled him, that actually seems kind of easy!
I don’t think I could personally do this kind of thing, certainly for emotional reasons, but there’s a lot of jobs I couldn’t do for emotional reasons. I was just thinking that I couldn’t be a nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, because I’d lose my shit the first time a baby died.
I don’t know man, of all the terrible things going on in the world — and, honestly, of all the terrible things going on just with sex — this seems near the bottom of the list of concerns.
It honestly doesn’t even seem like that much work! Tigress apparently got like three grand for a couple blowjobs and a dude falling a sleep while she straddled him, that actually seems kind of easy!
but it’s not just about the X minutes it takes to give a blowjob.
as “just” a stripper, a 5 hours shift at the club actually equaled a 9 hour day from breakfast ’til getting home after work. the amount of work that goes into maintaining yourself physically at that level: the gym, the tanning beds, the nails, the waxing, the hair salon, the clothes shopping, and on and on and on.
AND THEN i had to go to work and Deal With Duded for hours on end.
being a prostitute or sugar baby takes all of that to the next level. it may take only 20 minutes to suck a dick but that blowjob is nestled in with the hours spent at dinner and back at his place or out at an event or spending a weekend at a resort or whatever. that shit is a Full Time Job. an intense job. a hard job.
Yeah, I guess that’s true, but I suppose there must be some kind of economy of scale once you get going at it.
Though, I also got to admit that I don’t actually evaluate the merits of a job based on how hard it is. I mean, I’m sure it is hard, but I also don’t think I’d really care if it was easy, if someone is going to pay you $500 for a blowjob and you’re cool with it, then dang, whatever, it’s no skin off my teeth.
I think honesty is key here. There is no manipulation, no lies and no pretense. Both parties are consenting and both gain from the union. They are communicating with with each other and in some cases the relationship (which it is a form of) develops and becomes fixed. If only all relationships were so transparent.
Look, I’m sorry, but if you are born into a patriarchy that tells you that your looks are your best and most valuable asset and you find a way to make the rich old men who benefit from that patriarchy give you money for being young and pretty and reasonably good company? Get it, girl.
Women have been trading sex and attention for shelter and food for basically as long as we have been able to have sex for pleasure, why do people still get all het up about it?
(I think I actually have an account on Seeking Arrangement, because I was unemployed and in my 20s and the idea of someone with money being able to take care of me was really fucking appealing).
Yes — I mean, I’m a lesbian who’s learned that having sex with men when I don’t want to is really not good for me on a psychological level, but even so, god damn these arrangements sound appealing in a lot of ways. But I’m a fan of really practical partnerships without necessarily a lot of romance or romantic language around them.
From a purely pragmatic view–and I say this as someone who thought a lot about certain sorts of sex work in my early 20s–there are some fundamental shortcomings that result from trading sex and attention for shelter and food, namely that the skills that you build are not as applicable or valuable once you hit a certain age, because the patriarchy sucks. I made less money and had much less fun in my 20s building other, more boring and legal skill sets, but they’re paying off in a big way in my late 30s. This is not a knock against sex work per se, but a thorough knock against said patriarchy. We cannot all be Nina Hartley, y’know?
You also end up dependent on the whims of someone who might randomly decide not to take care of you, and that’s a bad employment strategy whether you work for a rich guy in a sexual capacity or, say, a big research university that keeps cutting your retirement and benefits.
Anything where you are that dependent on someone else is risky, which is why from a “get that money” standpoint, these women would be better off marrying these men.
I would also argue that a lot of successful sex workers are very good at communication, time management, marketing and a number of other things. But of course it’s hard to show that on a resume when you got those skills being a cam girl. (This actually reminds me of the book Orange is the New Black where the author talks about how smart and resourceful and hard-working many of the women she met in prison were, but they don’t get a chance to show those off because employers can’t see past their criminal history)
That is, of course, also as old an arrangement as can be, though it comes with another set of risks, namely prenups and divorce laws.
I would also make that argument, and that is yet another knock against the patriarchy. If sex is so important, why is it also devalued? (Rhetorical question.0
The graphic choice used to illustrate this is worthy of this response, which is to say it holds a special place in my heart always.
“Life’s not the French Rivera!
Life’s not a something in Rome!
la la la something something something
It’s…. A….. Li-ving!”
I think I watched every episode of this show. Latchkey kid, raised by 80’s tv. I didn’t even know that I remembered this show until I saw that photo. Thanks, Mallory!
Toasters, I read an awesome article on how to be a sugar baby recently, which kept emphasising the emotional labour involved. Way more interesting than this GQ one! But I can’t find it again because googling anything involving sugar baby just brings up tons of really well-SEO’d introduction websites. Anyone recognise it? Thought it was Titsandsass but I can’t find it there.
I think it may have been Alana Massey’s: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/letter-to-a-young…
yeeessss, thank you, that is it! Much more interesting about the labour of sugar babies.
I ran an interesting interview with a Sugar Baby on the Billfold last year. She has a Master’s degree and works for non-profits. Which is not to imply that Sugar Babies or sex workers in general must play the Respectability Politics game in order to be taken seriously. You can find it here: http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/how-a-sugar-baby-d…
I’m sorry but if you reschedule on anyone – twice! – you forfeit all right to ridicule that person.
Amen, you truth-speaking person you
I read the GQ piece. I was bothered by the citing of the unnamed “psychologists” and “experts” at the end. Seems like those people would have been willing to give their real names for the story.
Soooo, I am a Young Professional person, in a well-paid trade. The open secret in my really very large circle of Young Professionals is that almost every Young Lady in the work has done sex work. We have all cam-girl’d, done fetish modelling, been paid to go to an event with a Young Man who needed to be Presentable. Some of us more, some of us less, but this is… nota an uncommon thing, any more, because we’re all broke and the minimum wage is nonsense and you need to start somewhere.
I was also not keen on the GQ article, because: yes. The dudes sometimes want attention, and to pay for it, and the ladies would like to be paid for their emotional labour, so, you know, hashtag giveyourmoneytowomen, it is an actual thing in the world. You can leave, eventually, and sometimes having done the work makes you better at managing your boundaries later.
Posting to say thattttttt… amongst folks who are on the more liberal end of the spectrum, it’s common to say “but no to sex trafficking!”. The criminalization of migrant sex workers is a human rights issue, too, and I invite toasties to check out more writing and activism BY migrant sex workers FOR migrant sex workers – http://www.migrantsexworkers.com/about.html
The reason writers write about these exploited sex workers is because it’s a titillating subject. You wouldn’t have to go very far at all to find a minimum-wage worker who was raped by her supervisor behind the dumpster. But that wouldn’t be titillating, and your editor would have to deal with angry calls from PR flacks at the National Restaurant Association. So those are reasons not to write such a story. Not that they’re admirable reasons.
BREAKING: Local Commenter Shocked, Just Shocked, to Find a Vapid Article in GQ Magazine
I think her last comment, regarding whether or not sex workers can really be happy with their choice of jobs, really illustrates a difficulty that a lot of sex workers have. Namely, that you are not fallowed to complain about your job – even if you mostly like it. You are either the happy hooker or a tragic victim and if you fail to be cheerful and enthusiastic at all times about all aspects of the work, you’re the most tragic of tragic victims because you don’t even know how sad you are!
Right. Sex work involves a lot of customer service, and sometimes customers are assholes. Doesn’t mean you are deeply unhappy with your profession, just that you had to deal with an asshole at work.
Or even something more persistent, like that your job exposes you to risks of a chronic ailments. My job exposes me to risk of carpal tunnel and respiratory ailments- but I’m not a sex worker so when I take measures to protect myself, I’m not told that respiratory disease is a risk I signed up for when I took the job and told that I must really be miserable as a bike mechanic. Not being allowed to speak about problems in ones work means you can’t take steps to solve them
Right! From what I’ve read–and Actual Sex Workers, please correct me on this if I’m wrong–there are members (heh) of the public who are vile, because they’re customers, and customers are awful people like ninety percent of the time, just as is the case if you’re manning the counter at Macy’s or the help line at Verizon. And there are innate issues and limitations, like risk of disease (mechanics, pedicurists, EMTs, preschool teachers)*, or it being largely a young person’s job (sports, the military, modeling, some sorts of acting) or whatever.
But only with sex work do we assume that these problems mean nobody really wants to take the job, or that they haven’t planned for and figured out a way to deal with ’em. Like, I would assume Ilene is putting away some cash for a rainy day, or the point where she gets tired of putting up with men and their feelings and wants to try something new, or whatever, because…that’s what people do, and there’s no reason to assume she’s not an adult who can plan things.
* Hell, your average white-collar office job doesn’t do great things for your health either, between the blood clots and the recirculated air.
Totally. It’s probably about as likely that I’ll snap a glove and give myself a chemical burn, as one might have a condom break and get chlamydia, but only one is a “moral issue”.
My phones autocorrect is out of control + I have been doing french lessons all day = bad grammar. Sorry
Such a good point.
“I think that what is “off” there is that the reporter is approaching her subject with contempt prior to investigation.” YES! Also you identified the terrible tropes well, too. Thanks for writing this.
Are we sure that Brodesser-Akner intends us to read her as a reporter in that way? My assumption has been that she is presenting us with a sort of organized diary. Taffy is always, I believe, the central character in her writing, but at least until now I’ve seen that as a feature rather than a flaw. I’m drawn to her voice, to her experiences first and foremost. I suppose through Mallory’s critique I’m coming to the understanding that I am simply interested in Brodesser-Akner’s story regardless of her subjects’ stories. This morning I thought, great a new story about Taffy rather than, great, I’ll learn something real about the humanity of the people involved in these types of relationships and arrangements. Not that there isn’t a desperate need to that type of writing as well. Some of my favorites Alex Pappademas, Wesley Morris, Alan Sepinwall, Emily Nussbaum, and Molly Lambert help teach me to love and understand their subjects better. But I read Taffy, Emily Yoshida, and yeah, Mallory Ortberg to learn and understand more about the thoughts and viewpoint of particular people I respect and care about as individuals regardless of their subject matter.
Mallory is right, Brodesser-Akner doesn’t tell an even-handed story of sex workers, she doesn’t even attempt to hide or manage her own sense of morality or judgement on the people or systems involved. That would certainly be a problem if she were endeavoring to report on the world as it is. And it’s definitely a serious issue if that’s how people are receiving it. I suppose that’s where this critique hits hardest, because GQ does kind of present it in that way. And maybe Taffy does too, I’m often wrong. I’m just not certain that’s what Taffy intends or accomplishes, for better or worse.
I ran into a bug in my “prostitution should be decriminalized” loop the other day because I found myself juxtaposed with the “guns should be illegal” loop. it seems like all the great arguments for destigmatizing and decriminalizing sex work are exactly the ones gun control opponents break out to defend their murder tools: “if you make X illegal, only the criminals will have X.” while this did not cause me to question either conviction, it’s something I’m having trouble putting words to addressing. why do I think that making prostitution illegal just means making it a toxic underground industry, but that making firearms illegal would be effective? is it because people have a more fundamental and intrinsic need for sex? because I want to believe if people weren’t bombarded with gun availability that they’d pretty much tend to just forget about it and move on with their lives? if someone has debugged this inconsistency in the past, they should share their thoughts.
Because people aren’t guns. The central argument for decriminalising sex work is that sex-workers cannot work safely or access their human rights whilst they are criminalised. Guns do not have human rights.
I have no idea where you think there is an equivalence? The case for decrim of not based on anyone’s need for sex, but on workers’ need to work safely. I can’t even imagine how you’d turn that into a right to own or carry weaponry!
(Note: I’m British. Every argument for unfettered access to guns sounds completely nonsensical to me.)
Besides what mary said, there’s also the matter that a gun (as they exist today) is a complicated, very precisely engineered piece of equipment that a relatively small number of manufacturers make (most modern “gunsmiths” really just modify existing guns). They could be smuggled in from other countries, but because they are what they are, they would be harder to bring in than drugs that exist (at least in most cases) in the form of white powder. They’re easier to control, regulate etc. than work that relies on “equipment” that most people are born with.
How about because guns are designed to kill people, whereas sex is awesome and happens all the time, whether or not there’s money involved?
I’d say it depends on whether or not think sex work is an inherently Dangerous Thing, such that the only point in decriminalizing it is because regulated sex work is a lesser social evil than unregulated sex work. (Or whether or not you feel that human trafficking and exploitative sex work can be effectively prosecuted if any sex work is legal and accepted.)
If you take the view that many sex workers are real people doing a job who therefore deserve to the same labor rights and protections as any worker (in the USA admittedly, pretty shitty rights and protections), then they don’t seem similar at all to devices designed for and very easy to use for killing lots of people, and which demonstrably do cause lots of deaths.
What are the dangers? Danger of mental and physical brutality? Danger of being treated like a second class citizen? Danger of losing your home, even if you are not working from it. With the Swedish law there is also the danger of having your children taken from you as you are seen as an unfit Mother. Danger of never being taken seriously or gaining employment else where, despite qualifications if discovered. Danger of losing any current second job if discovered. Danger of being deported if working in a foreign country. The list is endless.
Right. Those are dangers that sex workers face when sex work *is* criminalized. They aren’t intrinsic to sex work.
…I see that there was a threading fail with my original comment, which was intended as a reply to crawlkill, the post right above mine.
It is currently legal to be a sex worker in Ireland and the UK and that is the situation as it stands today, especially in Northern Ireland where they have adopted the Swedish law. They are intrinsic to sex work absolutely.
You make a valid point, that legalization is in no way a panacea. But while you’ve listed dangers that sex workers do usually currently face in most places, you haven’t explained why those are intrinsic to sex work. Home health aids and nannies, to take two examples of workers who provide very personal physical services for money, don’t as a rule face those stigmata or dangers (although some do, and exploitation is al so a problem in some segments of that profession. Their protections and rights could certainly be greater). Why couldn’t sex work be seen and treated in the same way?
Well, you say, but we don’t live in an ideal world. But I don’t see how criminalizing sex work removes any of those dangers that sex workers face.
This is due to the law that currently says that it is legal to be a sex worker, does not allow a sex worker to either employ anyone or work with anyone. We also have stigma created by the media and further persisted negatively due to the buyer being made a criminal in some areas, such as Sweden and Northern Ireland. In Sweden Sex Workers have had their children taken off them as they are not deemed to be of sane mind and able to make good choices. Due to this situation where they are forced to work alone, that happens in no other work situation, we are in a much more vulnerable situation and due to the fact that we need to stay discrete in order to be able to work, it is also difficult to report any dangers that may come our way.
The New Zealand law by decriminalizing (not legalising), gives the sex worker the same rights as any other worker and people have been prosecuted for abusing sex workers in the work place. There has been a reduction in trafficked and coerced people, general abuse and stigma, which is what everyone wants, if they are being honest and not trying to stop sex work for moral reasons.
I think that sex work is one of the most difficult jobs one can do. That is hard fucking work man.
All the sex workers I have ever met, have been amazing people. I think it takes a lot of compassion to do that job. Not to mention emotional intelligence, and next fucking level customer service skills.
And it is an important service. Some percent of the Johns will probably be there for arsehole reasons (they get off on the power trip of their perceived power dynamic of the situation) but maybe it’s more about a need for intimacy than even sex.
Besides what mary said, there's also the matter that a gun (as they exist today) is a complicated, very precisely engineered piece of equipment that a relatively small number of manufacturers make (most modern "gunsmiths" really just modify existing guns). They could be smuggled in from other countries, but because they are what they are, they would be harder to bring in than drugs that exist (at least in most cases) in the form of white powder. They're easier to control, regulate etc. than work that relies on "equipment" that most people are born with.
I found the GQ article neither particularly well written nor thoughtful.
Wow I came on here as a sex worker to give my opinion and not one of the 5 comments I made have been allowed. I think that speaks for itself.
Hi, Kate. All comments from non-ID accounts are automatically put in pending; it looks like you left most of yours around 3am, when there’s not usually anyone moderating. They’ve all been approved. If you create an account in the future, you won’t have to go through that process, which is standard for any site that uses IntenseDebate.