wherein i wonder: what's wrong with being a fucking whore?

It’s just a short exchange, but it got me thinking. What, indeed, is wrong with being a fucking whore?

In an episode entitled “Popping Cherry” of season one of Dexter, the Showtime series about a benign serial killer, Dexter’s sister Deborah, a cop, visits a clutch of street prostitutes to query them about being witness to the abduction of the most recent victim in a string of serial killings. Deborah, who had been working undercover as a hooker in Vice, now approaches the group of girls she used to hang out with dressed as a cop—all conservative pants suit and graphite blue shirt and flashing badge—a far cry from her previous outfit, the “sex suit” she wore when working undercover, of hot pants, high heels and halter top.

“Listen,” says Deborah, “I have a confession to make. I’m a cop.”

“You’re not a cop,” screams one woman dressed in black short-shorts and a cut-off hot pink t-shirt. “You’re a whore!”

“I’m not a fucking whore,” Deborah counters, pointing her finger in the face of the hot pink t-shirt chick and shooting the intensifying adverb “fucking” like a bullet.

“Hey,” interjects Shanda, another in the group. “What’s wrong with being a fucking whore?” It’s a question that she repeats in the episode, and it’s the one that got me wondering. What, indeed, is wrong with being a fucking whore? And how has my thinking about whores, and whoring, changed?

I remember standing on the playground during recess in third grade. “Hey,” said a friend of mine, “do you know what a whore is?” She wasn’t taunting me; she was simply asking for information. I was ready to supply it. I liked knowing words and their meanings and being ready to pull out an obscure definition like a rabbit from a hat.

It’s a woman who has sex for money, I replied, feeling completely neutral about the subject matter. I might have been defining “prerogative,” “chiropodist” or “oddment.” The nearest adult, however, did not share my neutrality. She was this formidable superannuated math teacher. When she overheard me, her eyebrows shot into her silver curls and her lips pursed tight. She inquired what my friend Lisa had  asked me; I told her. I could see the effort it took her to forbear commenting on my definition. Discretion took the upper hand and she forbore adding anything, but I saw her struggle.

I grew up without much of a sense of a whore being a bad thing. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable proposition to me—women had bodies, men wanted sex, capitalism rules. I really didn’t get that it should be a morally or legally loaded issue. And in an abstract sense, I’ve continued to feel that way into adulthood. I have never understood why prostitution shouldn’t be legalized. Criminalizing sex work hasn’t helped deter either the purveyors or the purchasers; therefore, it’s always only seemed reasonable to legalize it, monitor it, regulate it, and make it safe for both the people selling and the people buying.

In the space of my intellect, that purely abstract and platonically idealized cave, I can reason out that there absolutely ought not to be anything wrong with being a fucking whore. Sex work should be treated with the same kind of paternal attention with which we treat other adult activities like gambling, drinking alcohol, or smoking cigarettes. Our culture and our legal system recognize that people aren’t going to not gamble, drink, or smoke, so we do what we can to make it safe for people to safely indulge in those vices. Often we fail—there’s no good way to regulate smoking, for example—and other times we have a marginal success—clearly our current system of carding minors to purchase alcohol is far superior to prohibition. In my mind, prostitution is certainly no worse than gambling, and it’s way better than smoking. We might as well make it legal.

But I have to say that my personal relationship with prostitution is far more fraught. For I have taken umbrage that anyone has ever thought I was a whore, and people have. I am, therefore, a hypocrite, and I’m not proud of it.

I remember one specific conversation happened when I was stripping. I had a customer, a somewhat regular customer, who came in about once a month and would drop a few hundred dollars on me. He owned race horses, the ones who trot along pulling the little buggy. He would make a small fortune betting on horses and then he’d blow a tiny portion of it on me.

One night, after I’d danced for him a while and he’d slipped me a fistful of hundreds, this man asked me if I would be interested in meeting him in his hotel room.

I’m not a prostitute, I said,  smiling but mildly offended.

“Some of the finest women I have ever known have been prostitutes,” he countered. “You’d be proud to find yourself among them.” And then he stood up and walked away, taking his hundreds and his unrequited lust with him.

Stripping, I got asked often if I would go to hotels. I always laughed it off. But on the inside, I prickled. Sure, I might undress, undulate, simulate sex, and rub against your clothed naughty bits for cash, but I draw the line at actual prostitution! How dare you, I thought on the inside, I’m not a fucking whore.

Part of the issue for me was that girls who are selling sex in strip clubs have an unfair advantage. It’s kind of easier for them to make mad phat wads of cash if they’re willing to “go all the way.” Those of us who drew the line in the sand at undressing for money resented those who threw themselves over the line to the dark side. We also shored up our flagellated egos by consoling ourselves that for all that we did do—rubbing our naked haunches against the hardened jeans-bound prick, sitting on laps, sweeping our knee against bulges, or letting certain liberties go in the dark recesses of the Champagne Room—we weren’t fucking whores. We hadn’t sunk that low. We didn’t make as much money, but we weren’t fucking whores.

More recently, I’ve been approached by prospective customers via email because of this blog. At least in the early days of my pretty dumb things, when I was less committed to my boyfriend and writing more often about wild and crazily indiscreet sex, I would get letters querying my availability for cash. Once again would rise the umbrage. I am not a fucking whore, I would think, and punch “delete.”

But writing this blog and coming into contact with women who have been sex workers—and the blogs they write—has caused me to question my comforting knee-jerk reaction. You can’t know Audacia Ray, for example, and not question what’s wrong with being a fucking whore. You can’t read her book, Naked on the Internet, and not think about women who choose to do sex work. You can’t read, however infrequently, the many blogs by women who do or have done sex work without it challenging your preconceptions. At least you can’t if you are me.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about once becoming, as I put it, “an accidental whore.” I exchanged  a blow job for $200, and though it wasn’t exactly prostitution, it wasn’t exactly not prostitution either. It was a definite grey area, but I needed the money and he needed the blow job and we were both seemingly content with the exchange we’d made.

I felt shame over it, this tiny grey act. It weighed on my conscience. Why? Because I wasn’t a fucking whore. I had defined myself for years by drawing that line, and here, poor and crazed, I’d stepped over it. I felt burdened with this secret, so much so that I never told anyone until I wrote about it here on my blog.

Which is, I have to say, crazy. I have known a handful of women who have spent time escorting. I like them. They have been, without exception, smart, creative, articulate and interesting. Why would I need so desperately to define myself against them and their one-time profession? What purpose does it serve me? Why, in short, does it make me feel better about myself? I still don’t have a succinct response.

I do know that all of this elliptical solipsism has made me realize this: there is, in fact, nothing at all intrinsically wrong with being a fucking whore. There may be problems attached to it—not everyone can do it without suffering emotional scars, as the College Callgirl has recently written. Not everyone does it free from coercion or drugs or fear or any of the many nefariousnesses that surround prostitution. Few people, I suspect, choose to go into prostitution without pressing financial need, but I could be wrong. That could be the vestiges of my preconceptions talking.

I suspect that there will be a chick-and-egg  relationship between whoredom and acceptance of it. Prostitution probably won’t be treated with the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves until people see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore, and people won’t see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore until whoring gets the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves. I realize here that I’m conflating all the flavors of prostitution into one flat pancake, and that this conflation is problematic. We as a culture seem to have more compassion but less tolerance for streetwalkers, while we have less compassion and more tolerance for escorts, for example, and that’s a class thing, and it’s a problem. I am, for brevity’s sake, lumping all prostitution into one indiscreet bundle. Whatever the kind of prostitution, I suspect there’s a catch-22 relationship in effect in terms of public perception. It’s a shame.

I suspect, though, that as the Internet has changed so much, so quickly, it will change this matter too. For it has changed me. Reading the writing of women sex-workers I don’t know, as well as meeting a few of them, has made me confront my own hypocritical attitudes. And that’s a good thing.

No one—whore, or not, or something somewhere in between—wants to be a fucking hypocrite.

Comments

[O]

I have a hard time thinking about this issue and making any sense of it, as you know. I've always been pro-the legalisation of sex work. Intellectually, the only things that have ever seemed 'wrong' to me about sex work are the ways it's devalued (and worse, despised) as work and the lack of proper protections for sex workers. Under the current system it is often a choice women (and men) make because of dire financial need and a lack of other opportunities--not for all, but for many. For every woman who freely chooses it there are many others who don't seem to have freely chosen it. The best way to fix this, it's seemed to me, was to elevate it to the status of other sorts of work, legalise it, and ensure protections and a lack of societal and cultural condemnation of the workers.

But at the same time, when I contemplate the idea of myself as an escort or prostitute, I encounter some kind of 'ick' factor, some kind of deep revulsion when I think about making that choice for myself. I also know that if I'd worked on the fringes of the industry as a stripper or as a phone sex operator or whatever I'd have drawn similar internal lines as the ones you describe.

I don't understand this. I don't understand this contradiction: why is it that I can genuinely believe that it's a perfectly legitimate form of work that ought to be legal and protected, and yet I feel so deeply uncomfortable when I think of it for myself? It's not simply that it's a job I wouldn't most like to do: I also wouldn't like working on a fishing boat, or in a factory, or as a waiter, or as a chemist, or as an engineer. I don't think I'd be happy at those things either or particularly good at them, but I don't feel the same deep sense of discomfort when I imagine doing them myself. It's not as simple as thinking, "Chemistry, a good field for some but not for me."
It's also not simply that currently it's dangerous and devalued work, often. There is something else going on here.

I don't have any answers (which is no doubt all too clear). But thank you as always for a brave post that makes me think. I learn from you.

Love
O

It has always seemed to me that the primary difference between prostitution and a traditional marriage is the retirement plan.

Or, as one of the web sites I read regularly has as one of its tag-lines, "Prostitution is a combination of sex and free enterprise. Which of those are you opposed to?"

[mossum]

I am in total agreement with the last commenter. Further, what is the difference between someone selling sex and someone selling their skills as an IT analyst, attorney or lobbyist? Every last one of us who are participating in any form of capitalism are either prostituting ourselves and/or pimping others. You said it perfectly above: "women had bodies, men wanted sex, capitalism rules."

[Anastasia]

It's an interesting subject, the concept of a whore varies from one society to the next, from one culture to the other. On the internet, a sex worker is just that, a sex worker. In the real world, depending on where a person lives,what culture one lives in, a sex worker is thought of in a variety of ways, and sometimes the term 'whore', may not be limited to the job description, but extend to define a person's mind/attitude/personality. Unfortunately, this is the definition of the word that I grew up in. At school, a slut or whore, was a female who didn't give a shit about herself (because females 'should respect themselves, in order to give themselves to the rightful suitor' and similar social bullshit), and I haven't cared much for this definition, but I've cared on occasions where the word would come my way, 'slut'/'whore' the thin line between the two is that the whore is paid, but the sentiment is the same, a woman who has a higher frequency of sex with a higher number of partners within any time frame.

In plain English, the word whore is simple to me, easier to stomach. It defines a higher sexual frequency, a higher partner frequency and I can get it.

Within my own culture, however, and growing up within it, the word was something else. It took a woman's personality and conduct into account, and because I can't fully separate myself from my culture, a part of me will always view it as a horrible word, one that doesn't do justice to women. I think the term 'sex worker' does more justice than 'whore'. Sex worker is a bona fide job description, that more or elss implies a specific code of conduct, whereas whore doesn't have this, it implies a sense or ambience of dirtiness/contamination. A stigma of sorts. It implies that a woman is easy to conquer, her having no control over her sexuality, her libido controlling her or that she is the sum total of her pussy. I don't know how to explain it, all I know is that I'd feel a sense of guilt/shame or be made to feel that on certain occasions, to immediately force myself beyond that feeling, particularly with the men in my life at that stage. They can do it, I thought, and not be viewed that way, or called such names, so it shouldn't be any different for me.

It's interesting the way the word is used from one person/culture to another. I use the term slut, but not in the sense that it's used (erotic or otherwise), I use it to define other sordid characteristics within a person or the (sexually) Machiavellian characteristics, where people pay no need to the feelings of another person, and so on, because that's the context I grew up in, on a cultural/ethnic level.

I think if a person has a good working environment, then the work can be pleasurable, and a person can sense some form of achievement, even if it's sex work, however if I walk around my own municipality (it has somewhere in the vicinity of ten brothels, that aren't on a par with Sydney's Stiletto brothel), I see the other dour side that is the opposite, filled with women who are doing the job, not because it's their vocation or their first option, many are doing it because they're on tourist visas, hoping to live within my country (rather than return to China, among other scenarios) for a longer period, to save as much as they can. They don't do it because they enjoy it, or to satisfy a client. That is the other side of sex work, regardless of how pretty it's pained on the Internet, and it's often not acknowledged, or avoided (because it's not as pretty or newsworthy as being a high priced escort)

[Jess]

Dexter is a good show.

As an aside, you're an excellent writer and I greatly enjoy reading your messages.

fear rules the mind, and the mind remains ruled by fear.....

when this occurs on such a ceaseless level of infinite degrees, then no amount of semantical overturns and end-arounds will lift the obscuring walls separating the mind from the senses.

'sex' has become an obvious tool used by many to incite the arousal of the senses as a means of control. look at madison avenue: look at 'dateline': look at the church: look at politicians (those who seek to control and, ironically, those who are controlled by, sex...)

'sex' becomes their tool, used to invoke many aspects of desired outcomes. all though seeking to extert control over the minds and over the senses until there can no longer be an honest understanding of where 'sex' ends and where sensuality can and should begin.... in a culture that has to have 'experts' in every known field - no 'expert' has risen to the forefront with the honest insight into the need of living deeply and initmately within the senses. the late robert anton wilso in one of his very well known stories - illuminatus!, if i am correct... - put forth the interesting concept of 'tantric engineers':

these were highly trained women taught to use their vast and endless knowledge in the field of sensuality to soothe individuals of high ranking access to power and devastation, such as the president of the united states. many years after reading illuminatus! and robert anton wilson's concept of 'tantric engineers' - i have held on to the thought of training women to realise the extent by which sensuality must enter into and beyond the senses to liberate the mind's propensity for wallowing in the mire and the shite of fear -

to cast forth the 'whore' into the kingdoms and wisdom of the 'sacred whore'.....

[tinakala]

Good reasoning. I`m not sure why being a "fucking whore" is a bad thing. Dexter rocks. And so do you.

[Prince of Darfur]

Whether anything is wrong intrinsically or otherwise with being a whore, I object to the terms "sex work" and "sex worker."

"Sex work" is probably an attempt to make prostitution acceptable by making sex seem prosaic. Doing sex work is like spinning a lathe or reaming metal -- it's just something you can do for money.

Sex, however, is a mysterious, intimate activity and the means of conception. It can never be made to seem prosaic, and for that reason "sex worker" is a clumsy term.

Because sex is mysterious and intimate, society will always think that something is wrong with being a fucking whore. Whores will always be in the same category as mercenaries. They aren't doing it for love but for money.

[minstrel boy]

first off, let me add my voice to all in encouraging folks to check out "dexter." astonishingly good stuff there.

i often used the services of professionals back in my touring days. it was far less complicated and much less risky than negotiating a series of tawdry one nighters over the course of a tour. less chance of "blowback" too. i never had an escort, call girl, or what ever term you prefer, follow me from one city to another because they figured one night and one morning constitutes the beginning of something beyond chance encounter and mutual good clean fun. my 3rdX worked as a licensed surrogate while she was nailing down her PhD to be a more traditional style therapist. she was a fountain of information when it came to the history and social mores regarding prostitution. she has always regarded the current few hundred years of denegrating prostitution to be fairly abberational. there was a great book that 3rdX wrote a chapter in (it's probably out of print now) called "Women of the Light" which had chapters written by various other "sacred prostitutes" who used their enlightenment and sexual freedom to make lives a little better here and there.

my daughter who danced viewed things the same way chelsea. it's where she went to protect herself emotionally. if it takes a little hypocrisy to defend against the cognitive dissonance, so be it. your other honesty more than absolves you of that little bit.

[Marcelle Manhattan]

I was offered a job in sex work about six months ago. I have a nauseating corporate day job that's a real hinderance to my writing, and I saw this as a way out. My only objection was not wanting to wind up in jail. Perhaps I was being naive about the emotional baggage, but I would have given it a shot.

I agree with basically every poster here. And the one theme that keeps recurring, I notice, is ambivalence. I think debates about sex work, pornography, and other issues that pit female power against female pleasure, will always be fraught with undecidability. To paraphrase Barbara Johnson, I think women are socially conditioned to be confused about the difference between their pleasure and their victimization. Calling someone a fucking whore really isn't helping to sort things out.

[Hobo Stripper]

OMG, why aren't you already on my blogroll? I think I couldn't figure out which "box" to put you in on the sidebar. I'll just stick you in sex workers for now... if it's wrong, let me know, k?

[Rich]

What's wrong with it? Nothing, intrinsically. The reason it's used that way has totally to do with the way society has defined the game. By society's rules, women are supposed to get married and have kids. This is reinforced by those who have money because it's a way of making them rich, and it's reinforced by everyone who buys into the system because they've already invested in it--no matter how much money they have.

If you want to unravel what's wrong with this picture, you have to go back and ask, "What would happen if women could have control over their own sexuality?" There would be fewer children, which would mean less workers, which would raise wages. Men, especially powerful men, would have to work harder to get sex from women. The concept that a woman is degraded when she sells sex is tightly bound up in how the game is defined.

That's why becoming a sex worker, of any kind, is a strike against the status quo and why it carries a stigma from those in the establishment. You are really rejecting the game if you don't look down on prostitutes, and the word "whore" has been defined in just the way needed to express this dismissiveness about prostitutes and reinforce society's values. That means it carries a real element of courage to be a sex worker--if you have a choice.

Having lived in the game and played by its rules, you will inevitably feel a sense of repulsion at being a whore. Just listening to others use the term in a pejorative way is going to attach it's sound to some emotional baggage that you can't easily dump. But that doesn't make being a whore (fucking or otherwise) a bad thing. It's only a bad thing in relationship to something, to a set of beliefs you might not want to sign up for in the first place.

[Jonathan]

My new wife makes way less than me. She contributes perhaps $15 a week to our household account, into which I put at least $4K a month. She moved in here in July, with her 12 year-old daughter, to my big house, a good car, good school--and we live in Marin. Is she doing sex work? Why not?

I think culture determines a LOT. There have been as many cultures on this planet as there have been human beings, so there are loads of arrangements people have, and some we may never know of. One of them may even had the same kinds of arrangement we have in terms of sex work, and not called it that.

I like that someone objected to the term "sex work." On another level it sometimes IS work between me and my wife, that drudgery feeling, where she's getting her jollies and I could be enjoying it more, or vice versa. Sometimes I don't like how she kisses me sometimes, she breathes heavy on me and I feel suffocated, her hair gets in my face, her breath is not great. Sex is an exchange of sorts, in and of itself, and almost all the time it's great with us, and we find it different every time. Interestingly, when she comes and I don't she apologizes for having had her way with me, and I always thank her when I come.

Loads of layers...