Getting Away With Hating It

Charlotte Shane, who writes really interestingly about her sex work (and with a lot of awareness, I think, about how her particular brand of voluntary sex work is relatively rare), on how the concept of “enthusiastic consent” dovetails with her experience of actually doing her job:

To make sure we’re on the same page: I am enthusiastic about earning money, and I want to do the work that will earn me that money, so superficially ”enthusiastic consent” and “wanted sex” apply to work sex because work sex is connected to cash. (See also: freely committing to a profession as a sex worker. I wouldn’t have done that unless I wanted to.) But if every client were willing to pay me my full rates for no sexual contact at all, it’s unlikely (read: would not happen) that I would insist we have sex anyway. Even with clients who I sincerely like and care about, I’ve almost never wanted to have sex or even spend time with them so much that I did it for free. My enthusiasm around work is rarely about the sex itself — though it sometimes can be, if the chemistry is right — but rather about the payment I’ll have afterwards. Maybe 20% of the time I truly hate the sex, 20% of the time I like it, and the other 60% is tolerating it, not minding one way or another but certainly not feeling overwhelmed with enjoyment. I show up willing; I don’t show up wanting.

A guy in the comments points her towards a piece he wrote for the Good Men Project about hiring escorts and then choosing to stop doing so once he realized these women are doing it because they need the money, which is not, like, a newsflash, one would think, but it does illustrate what Shane is saying about clients who want a more intimate experience of her “real self” than she is willing to sell. Many conversations! We will be talking to Charlotte in the near future, so if you have questions, let’s hear them.