Sex Work and Equity

Apostate’s and Ren’s posts about sex and power got me thinking.

There is a lot of power in sex and so unsurprisingly, there is power in sex work too.

Ren has a good point here:

“When was the last time you saw Mia Hamm apologizing for her skill in soccer, or Condi Rice apologizing for her political position, or J.K. Rowling apologizing for her writing talent, or Martha Stewart apologizing for her business skills? When was the last time you saw any of them apologizing for the success, financial rewards, benefits and power their advantages bring them? The answer is never. They are not expected to feel guilty for their talents, their advantages, their work, or the power and rewards those things bring them.

The disdain comes far more frequently when that power, or empowerment, or any other sort of success or gain comes-especially in the case of women- via sex and sexuality, especially in tandem with being conventionally attractive.”

There’s a lot to this. Especially because sex work isn’t just about looks. Or even sexuality. Although without a certain measure of both one will not be successful.

For me, sex work actually helped a few insights kick in. I knew it was a temporary (planned on 1 year, extended to 2 years) gig. So I did it pretty close to full time during that period. I started working in a local club in CA, moved to another one because of some creepiness on the part of the owner of the first one as well as better income potential with the second, and then hit the big time – Vegas. I got an apartment there and lived there half the week – Thursday through Sunday or Monday. I would typically work from 7 or 8pm until 3am on those days.

So what were the insights? First, that I liked calling my own shots and being my own boss. Also, that I could make people listen. I’d always been intimidated by supervisors, who always seemed much more comfortable with the hierarchies in big companies (Ford, IBM) than I ever could be. But I found when dancing that these dudes, who fit squarely within my core demographic, were typically this way because they needed an imposed structure. If I could impose the structure, they would eat it up (well, or try). And I figured out how to do that.

Another insight was much more crude. Cash. As a stripper, I made more than double what I did as a lawyer, working fewer hours. Even though now, I’m making multiples of that (knock wood), I don’t get the same carnal, greedy satisfaction. Why? It’s not cash, and I don’t have as much control over it.

Going through my girly purse that I carted around at the end of a good day, counting the Benjamins – it was like sex. I’d only gotten pieces of paper before. And always the same amount. With stripping, I could set a target, and stay until I hit it. And then there were the bonanzas – crazy tipsy internet millionaires who wanted to be benefactors and give me a night off and asked me how much I needed to make to do that (even if I had to do some gambling with them, it was usually a nice jackpot and often I was given additional money to gamble, much of which I kept).

Or some awesome fellow stripper who’d invite me into the Emperor’s Room (three dances for a hundred bucks, total of 12 minutes) with a group who needed an extra dancer – the networking I sucked at as a lawyer paid off bigger dividends in stripping. Riding back to the hotel in the cab, counting the bills in the back seat with the lights of the Strip beaming down.. there was power there.

But I agree too with what Apostate says about sex work: “You are fulfilling a gender role that has never been found to be all that distant from a woman’s purpose in life — to be the soldier’s entertainment.”

True, the entertainment is part psychotherapy, not a pink-collar gig. But still, at its essence, it’s entertaining men, and that is not particularly paradigm-busting.

But I’d have to say my biggest reason why I believe sex work lacks something many other jobs have boils down to one concept: equity.

This is allied to leverage, discussed here.


Let’s say you are a teacher. You typically get better teaching opportunities through experience, you vest into a pension, you have tenure-based raises, you can put the experience on your resume. As a psychotherapist, you build up referrals, you can increase your rate, some age on your face can help, you earn additional credentials that in turn can increase your rate. As a salesperson, a doctor, a lawyer, a union worker, a writer – time can bring security, promotions, more qualifications that can translate into ones 40s, 50s and even 60s being productive years.

In other words, you build equity in the profession, and that brings security and a more passive income stream. You don’t have to beat down as many doors, it’s more likely business comes to you, for decades, if you choose to stay in that long. And if you want to shift fields, your experience will typically stand you in good stead.

There are some counterarguments. Strippers, escorts, porn actors can build up referral streams and command more money over time. But in most cases that caps out, and it does so pretty quickly. Yes, some make it into business positions or behind the camera. But that’s not a natural progression, and not open to most. Some work into their 40s. Yes, but again that’s rare, and it’s still young to age out of a profession. And when you do, if you want a non-sex-work job, your resume will either sport a gaping hole, or you’ll have some explaining to do. Of course, it’s nobody’s business, but that doesn’t mean it won’t operate as if it is.

It’s hard to turn sex work into passive income. You’re selling your body, and unlike other jobs, you can’t delegate – again, unless you are one of the few to get in on the biz end. It’s a constant effort. It’s hourly work, with no guarantee that the hourly rate will rise or that at the end of a number of hours, there will be more work. Certainly that’s true of other jobs as well, sometimes, but most of the time there is much more potential.

So what does this boil down to? We know that sex work employs men, but it employs many more women, percentage-wise. So that makes the comparative-equity situation gender-based. You have a profession that provides less equity, and more women than men are doing it. The net effect is less stability and leverage for women, regarding our careers and lives.

Obviously, this operates at the collective and not the individual level. On an individual level, each separate woman’s cost-benefit analysis is her own to measure. Some of these women are doing sex work in part because other options are not available. But for others, they are, and investing ones 20s and 30s without putting away enough for financial independence – which is a high bar, retiring at that age – will chill their future prospects. So collectively, what it means is that the more people doing sex work, the greater the perpetuation of women being the more economically and societally vulnerable. The more women, percentage-wise, without leverage, without equity.

So what I can and do say is that I fully believe in sex workers' rights, in decriminalization of sex work, and in respecting individual women’s choices to do it. What I cannot say is that I believe that choice, collectively, is a good one to encourage our daughters and friends to undertake.