SimplySxy

Tag: Feminism

  • Sex Work & Feminism

    Sex Work & Feminism

    For me, and for all the sex workers I know, sex work is work. That means that it is a job that is just as valid as any other job, with its definite pros and cons, and some people love their job while others hate it, just like in any other field of work. A lot of people who are not familiar with the sex industry tend to confuse sex work and sex exploitation.  The former implicates a choice to be in this line of work, while the latter implies coercion. All sex workers are opposed to sex exploitation.

    With that being said, my personal way of seeing sex work is one of exchange, connection, and intimacy. We all need to be touched and desired from time to time. What I am selling is not my body, but my time, my companionship, the way someone feels in my presence, and a true connection on a human level – all of which are key elements to intimacy. I like to describe myself as a professional fairy: I create a multi-sensorial bubble in which my partner and I are free to discover one another, and, sometimes, a little bit of ourselves.

    Misconceptions About Sex Workers

    One of the biggest misconceptions about sex work is, as I already mentioned, the fact that people don’t differentiate work from exploitation. In that line of thinking, there is a widespread theory among some types of feminism that states that any money transaction in a sexual context takes away the person’s ability to consent to said sexual activities. The problem is that kind of thinking denies all agency to sex workers, who are grown women who are otherwise perfectly able to think and decide for themselves. There is just as much violence in denying a person the ability to consent, as there is in not respecting that consent. (As a parenthesis, I just want to add that the vast majority of the sex workers I know are especially intelligent, strong and grounded people, able to stand up, speak, and provide for themselves, usually better so than most people.)

    Another misconception that is often encountered, is that sex workers have necessarily suffered abuse, or live with mental health problems. The thing is, some sex workers have had traumas in their lives, while others have not. Some sex workers do live with a mental health condition, but then again a lot of people who are not in the sex industry do too. It is also important to mention that we, as a society, tend to judge more severely women when they make a choice that is considered “risky,” and associate it with emotional instability, instead of bravery as we would naturally do with men.

    Why Is Sex Work Stigmatized In Society?

    As developed by Gail Pheterson in “The Prostitution Prism” and “The Whore Stigma,” the oldest form of prostitution is marriage.  Historically as societies, we have used marriage to keep women in line and we have put on them the whole burden of sexual, domestic, and emotional labor, expecting them to care for everyone in the household without any form of compensation. Nowadays, marriage has been replaced by the traditional monogamous heterosexual relationship, but the expectations towards women have barely changed. That is why, when a woman takes control of her own sexuality, and chooses to sell her sexual and emotional labor, we collectively feel like what she is doing is inherently wrong. We keep sex work as a taboo, we ostracize sex workers and clients (thus making their work even more dangerous), because on top of not offering all that labor to a single man, the women who choose to do sex work get an immediate and direct financial compensation for the work they do – how dare they, right?

    What I Love About Being A Sex Worker

    I especially love the freedom that sex work gives me. I am an independent courtesan, so I get to make my own schedules and choose the clients that I see. I am also a full time student and a writer, so a job that gives me both free time and a lot of inspiration is the best for me!

    Another positive side of sex work to me is the fact that it forces you to set limits for yourself. Surprisingly, I found that having to word out those limits in a professional environment made setting them in my personal life easier, thus making my overall sexual life healthier.

    Can Sex Work Be Empowering?

    Absolutely! As Virginie Despentes writes in her essay “King Kong Theory,” it is all about the mind state and the consciousness of what one is doing. For example, dressing up in a sexy way and wearing high heels, when done strictly to please men, or when done without thinking about it, can be considered a symbol of female oppression – because society forces that look on women and tells them that it is the only way to be beautiful and desirable, and the subtext of that tells women that being desirable to men should be their main goal in life at all times. But, from another perspective, if a woman is wearing heels and lingerie in order to get a direct benefit from it (such as money from a client) and she is conscious of it, the choice of clothing switches from being oppressive to being subversive. The same goes for body hair removal, makeup, or having phallocentric sex. When you are a woman, the act of consciously complying to a societal sexist imperative in order to make money off of it is in itself an act of rebellion, and should be celebrated as such. 🙂

    Léonie Stein – A professional fairy and independent courtesan from Montreal. Free-spirited, curious, and adventurous, as a full time student and writer I thrive on art and literature, as well as on pop and internet cultures. I am both easygoing and sophisticated, and human beings fascinate me. I consider myself a radical feminist and a sex workers’ rights advocate.

    Follow Léonie Stein on:
    Website:     www.leoniesteinmontreal.com

    Eros: https://ca.eros.com/quebec/montreal/files/9342173.htm?wn=1

    Montreal Erotic Services: http://www.montrealeroticservices.com/author/leoniestein/

    Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeonieSteinMtl

    Check out Léonie Steins’ duo options at https://www.leoniesteinmontreal.com/double-tasting

    Images courtesy of Léonie Stein

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  • My Introduction To Rape Culture

    My Introduction To Rape Culture

    I remember exactly when I first understood what “rape culture” meant.

    I was nineteen and a sophomore in college. I was talking with a woman I knew about gender and sexual politics, and I just wasn’t getting it. She was describing what it was like for her to move through the world as a woman, to be constantly under sexual surveillance, to always be worried about whether some guy would harass or attack her, to never know if she could walk down the street without getting cat called. This was pretty foreign to me, because I’d never seen any of this happening.

    Partly, that was because I’d never really fit in with most other boys and I didn’t understand how the performance of masculinity encourages boys and men to compete with each other to demonstrate their manhood. I simply didn’t play those games. But more than that, it was because men don’t do the same things when they see a woman with a man. I had no idea that women’s experiences walking down the street were so different when I wasn’t there.

    So my friend gave me a challenge that changed my life. She offered to walk down the street on a weekend night and allow me to walk behind her so I could see what happened. I took her up on it and the next Friday night, out we went. She was dressed in pretty standard “going out” clothes and we headed out to the strip of stores, bars, and restaurants that most college campuses seem to have within walking distance. I stayed about twenty feet behind her- close enough to observe without seeming like we were together. And I was shocked at what I saw.

    Individual guys whispered or made comments about her as she passed them. They’d ask her where she was going or simply turn and stare at her ass. Groups of guys were worse, though. I could see them checking her out and talking to each other about her body and appearance. A few times, one guy in a group would say something and the rest of them would laugh while staring at her. And twice, one guy said something, followed by another guy escalating either the volume or the message, with another dude chiming in. I could see them all competing with each other to be the most macho, not caring that their games were at the cost of my friend’s feelings of safety.

    It was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first glimpse I got at the crap that women have to put up with, simply for moving through the world. I started paying attention to it more and thought about how I would feel if I couldn’t go anywhere in public without having to think about getting harassed, how I would feel if I couldn’t feel safe walking down the street. If a picture is worth a thousand words, getting to see this for myself was worth so much more.

    Over time, I came to see that I needed to do more about this than simply not participate in it myself. In my workshops on sexuality, masculinity, and gender, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and backgrounds about these topics. And one pattern that consistently shows up is that there are a lot ofcisgender men who act like this without realizing the impact it has. Many of them are so surrounded by the Act Like a Man Box that they see it as totally normal. Some of them would like to break out of it, but they don’t know how and don’t have the support to do it. And a lot of them are scared to change because other people will attack and shame them back into the box. It’s not just men who reinforce this prison.

    I also started to understand the connections between street harassment and sexual assault. One of the common threads is the belief that one person’s desires for sex, sexual attention, or validation as a man outweighs another person’s autonomy, safety, and consent. Another is that very few folks are actually teaching boys and young men about respect. Most of the conversations that I’ve seen center on shaming them without giving them the skills they need to navigate relationships. What if we could actually talk with boys about how to ask for sex, or ways to flirt without being creepy? I know some parents who are doing this, but the “boys will be boys” attitude is still common. Just as most people shy away from talking with girls about these issues out of discomfort with addressing adolescent female sexuality, we also avoid looking at adolescent male sexuality with any clarity. So is it any surprise that people grow up confused about relationships? Is it all that shocking that many of my coaching clients struggle with these same issues as adults?

    I’m deeply grateful to my friend for showing me what rape culture is about. For helping me understand that the world she moved through was so different from the one I moved through. For making it possible for me to take my first steps towards understanding what she and other women deal with every day. If you’re a cisgender man, I really encourage you to ask a friend if she’d be willing to do this experiment with you. Trust me. It’ll change your life.

    This article has been republished with permission from Charlie Glickman. Please visit Charlie Glickman’s website  to view original post and more of Charlie’s works.