One of the elements that most intrigued me when I watched Firefly years ago was the idea of a sex work as a positive, healthy, prestigious occupation – which I believe it could be in a society more evolved than ours. But it didn’t take long to realize the creators either didn’t get it or were setting up a revelation that despite the Companion Guild’s great public relations buzz, it hadn’t really reformed sex work to the degree Inara claims. I suspect it’s a little of both (the creators not thinking it all the way through, and the intent to expose the Companion Guild as one more piece of Alliance hypocrisy), but whatever the intent, what we’re left with is a hodgepodge. We’re told Inara is respected; we’re often shown she’s not. We’re told the “whores” in “Heart of Gold” are different because they don’t belong to the Guild, but never get a satisfactory answer to the question of why the hell that should make such a difference.
This got me thinking: what would a writer have to do to create a fictional a society in which sex work is positive, safe and fulfilling for both workers and clients, and considered a good thing by society? Can it even be done, when you factor in the reality that many prostitutes are minors of both genders, too young for any sort of legal employment?
The first step seems obvious: your fictional society would have to grant sex workers the same security, autonomy and protection that other employees and independent contractors have. This is where Firefly more or less gets it right. But what about minor prostitutes? Kids usually wind up on the street because the situation at home was no better, and our society isn’t prepared to talk about practical exit strategies for kids who desperately need to get away from their homes. If you protect adult sex workers, that would be highly beneficial – but it would reveal in disturbing detail the fact that women were never the sex class. Children have always been a sex class, too.
So it seems to me you need a society in which:
- sex workers are protected by the law, like other workers,
- women have as many options in life as men have,
- abused children have access to practical remedies and know about them,
- sexual predators of any sort are always thought of as the worst kind of scum, even when they’re such nice white boys with such promising futures, and
- people believe all workers deserve basic respect and dignity. Otherwise, legally protected sex workers – like restaurant servers – will get some basic rights and protections, but still be made to feel worthless by asshole customers with entitlement issues.
- Also, I’m not sure you can achieve this as long as monogamy remains the model for your society. It’s plausible that your society could believe people should be faithful without blaming sex workers for making infidelity possible, but highly unlikely.
And that’s just getting started. To convince me that your fictional sex work is a truly good thing, I would also like to hear that your sex workers enjoy the sex they have on the job. That at least many of them find their careers fulfilling in some way. And I would really, really like to see roughly as many male sex workers as female, and female customers as male, or else I will still be frustrated that in this enlightened society you’ve created, you’re okay with continuing the idea that sex is something women yield to men rather than a just plain human experience.
I’ve given this a fair amount of thought over the past couple of years, and yet I think there’s still a lot I haven’t worked out. What would convince you sex work was working out nicely for a fictional society?
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“Sex is not limited to ‘roll in the hay’ – it is something extremely pleasurable that people can to with and for each other. Befriending someone for the sake of sharing that can only be seen as an inferior motivation in a society that sees sex itself as inferior; in our imagined utopia that wouldn’t be the case.”
Sex is extremely pleasurable, and upthread I describe it as “healthy and wholesome.” However, besides being pleasurable, healthy, and wholesome, sex is also a very personal act. I don’t think that’s likely to change, no matter how sex-positive a society becomes. I doubt introducing yourself to a stranger and asking for sex will ever be likely to yield a positive response, any more than introducing yourself to a stranger and asking to use his or her toothbrush.
There’s an elaborate mating dance surrounding sex— not just for us, but for all primates. Some people don’t enjoy the mating dance. Others aren’t good at it. Some simply want a totally selfish, self-focused act with no repercussions— it might be more accurate to say they want to masturbate with a partner. I don’t think any of those options are implicitly wicked (though plenty of societies have institutionalized it in a way that demeans both partners), and until we move past the concept of money as a basic unit of social exchange, the proverbial “pay cash up front” is likely to remain a simple way to make that clear to both parties.
Pocket Nerd(Quote) (Reply)
TheLady, good points. But I’m not sure PocketNerd’s position is totally confined to the patriarchal view. Sex often leads to emotional closeness – we can’t know if that’s a hard-wired behavior or a cultural one, but if it IS hard-wired, then even a very different society could have situations like this:
Two people are madly in love and have great sex. But Partner A really likes a certain sex act now and again, and Partner B doesn’t. They are both comfortable with Partner A going to someone else for that sex act. But the “someone else” could develop feelings for Partner A, or maybe even Partner A could get confused. A person specially trained to provide sex without developing possessive feelings toward partners could fill that gap.
PocketNerd’s point re: the mating dance is also a good one. Bottom line: unless everyone totally stops seeing sex as intimate, there will be “strings attached”, and reason to want sex that doesn’t have strings attached.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
re why people pay for sex – there’s an interview with Victor Malarek (first half http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Mj2haletE) where he claims researching and talking with johns, and finding the predominant reason they pay for sex is power and control. (Also that most of them appeared unconcerned whether or not they were using a prostitute that had been coerced or trafficked)
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer: Yeah, plus? No matter how liberal, sex-positive, and casual-sex-positive a society is, there will probably always be people who–for one reason or another–don’t have reciprocal sexual chemistry with anyone they know and don’t want to or have time to actively go out and meet new people.
Been there, done that. Have also seen it with my friends–and, for what it’s worth, have a lot of good-looking and personable friends who I wouldn’t sleep with because…there’s no chemistry and I therefore wouldn’t be getting anything out of the experience.
In those situations, (idealized) prostitution has a couple of major advantages over the bar scene.
1) If you’re hiring a prostitute, you’re probably following an advertisement, a site, or an agency: the prostitutes in question have already indicated that they’re willing to have sex for money. You don’t have to worry about bothering people who aren’t interested in a one-night-stand–or in sex with you in general–and they don’t have you bothering them. Better for everyone, I’d think.
2) Hiring someone to perform a task places the relationship on a professional level. Payment says “okay, you’ve gotten what you’re getting out of this,” and contracts spell out what is and isn’t okay. It’s much easier and less awkward to hire someone for a night than to pick someone up and have to go through the whole “um, you know I’m not *ever* gonna call you, right?” routine.
Now, you can get both these things online these days, sort of. But I think, human nature being what it is, there’d be a lot more people willing to have the above take place if they were getting paid for it.
Izzy(Quote) (Reply)
Charles RB, you’ve just made me realize another thing an author would have to convey for me to believe sex work is doing well in a fictional society: that the main reasons for buying sex are NOT power and dominance, but rather things like not feeling like taking the time to find a partner, not knowing how to find a partner, needing a partner who understands fully there will be no strings, etc.
Izzy, yes, exactly.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
If I was feeling pessimistic, and I am, I’d say in a world where that is no longer a reason to hire prostitutes, it’d be a niche industry. (Other sex work could follow, with the likely exception of porn because even without power issues, people like to masturbate)
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Just a comment about “Firefly”.
I’m no expert on the matter, as my only other exposure to them was in the pseudo-historical “Shogun” by James Clavell, but I always thought the Companions were loosely based on the courtesans of the Edo period in Japan.
ehron(Quote) (Reply)
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/06/07/sex-work-disrespect-and-womens-empowerment/
There’s a post over at Sociological Images that might be of interest…there’s a video “produced by a Christian anti-pornography initiative. It uses the logic that all women involved in sex work are “somebody’s daughter” and, thus, men should not consume pornography.”
[dave](Quote) (Reply)
Gosh, every woman I’ll ever have sex with is “somebody’s daughter!” I guess that means I should give up on sex altogether!
The argument, of course, predicates that sex and sex work are demeaning (especially for a woman). It doesn’t make any sense if you don’t think sexual activity somehow diminishes you as a person. Christian anti-pornography movements aren’t about empowerment, they’re about control. They’re horrified that women dare to openly exhibit sexual behavior, particularly sexual behavior that reduces your value as a daughter or wife— i.e. as chattel.
On top of that, criminalizing porn historically has the same effect as criminalizing booze and drugs: It drives the industry underground, but doesn’t significantly hinder the supply or the demand. People would still sell porn, buy porn, and watch porn, but women who work in porn would no longer have even the minimal protections they have now. (I suspect this is the true goal of the anti-porn movements’ leaders.)
Pocket Nerd(Quote) (Reply)
I suspect it’s more likely the anti-porn movement leaders don’t care that the meager protections would be removed, rather than intend to have them removed.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
So…I worked in porn–not video, but still images–back in the day. Yes, I’m somebody’s daughter; yes, I’d rather not have my parents find the photos (but who *doesn’t* have things in their lives they’d rather their parents didn’t find out?) and I’m not sure how it’s relevant.
For that matter, any guy I ogle on the train is someone’s son. So what?
Izzy(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t know, Charles. I know it sounds a bit paranoid, but the religious reactionaries’ actions toward women always seems more like veiled malice than indifference to me. For example, indifference would cut funding for sex education; instead we see misleading sex ed programs to discourage women from using contraception. That looks like deliberate malice, to me.
Now please excuse me while I adjust my aluminum foil beanie, to keep out the CIA mind control rays… (>_<)
Pocket Nerd(Quote) (Reply)
The worrying thing is that they might actually _believe_ the misleading “sex ed” they peddle.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
You may be right, Charles… I just have a hard time understanding how people who obviously aren’t stupid can believe such conspicuously counterfactual things. I know it happens, of course, but I can’t compartmentalize that way, and I don’t understand people who do.
Pocket Nerd(Quote) (Reply)
The whole “somebody’s daughter” argument is straight from patriarchal theories of female ownership: every woman is defined by her status as the chattel of a father, husband, priest etc. Loose women who have fallen through the cracks of the possession paradigm have special and mostly derogatory designations, e.g. “spinster” or “crone”.
So this “Christian” anti-porn argument is that you shouldn’t watch porn stars (or use prostitutes, or rape schoolgirls, whatever) because it’s damaging to the men who own them. Not because it’s, you know, maybe not the best thing for the women involved or anything.
It’s the same kind of thinking that makes people feel more sorry for rape victims if they were virgins. The theory is that violating their virginity a) reduces their value to the men who own them b) deprives any future owners of an important mark of validity. Like taking the tags off a designer handbag before selling it on Ebay, type of thing.
TheLady(Quote) (Reply)
Re: whether it’s malice or just not caring. I suspect there’s a handful of malicious people at the base of it, who full well know what they’re doing and mean it, and they use people who don’t think it through and don’t care but like the basic message to expand the movement well beyond what the haters could achieve on their own.
TheLady, you’re getting into the issue of rape having its origins are a property crime against men, not a violation of a woman’s rights. In addition to the things you mentioned, I think this is why we make a big show of being incensed when we find out a father’s molested a daughter, but we don’t really want to do anything that would prevent that, such as empowering mothers or giving children any sort of recourse of their own. Because it’s His daughter, and deep down we still kind of think if he wants to take the tags off her before selling her on eBay, well, it’s only his loss. I’m not saying anyone consciously thinks that, but I think the flawed thinking involved in classifying rape as a property crime has not filtered out of public consciousness. And it does seem to me we’re far more outraged at relatives who molest boys or strangers who molest girls than we are when family members molest girls.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Spot on, Jennifer – and a little more OT, I think it would be well nigh impossible to imagine a society in which all of those hideously complicated and convoluted attitudes are erased to the point where sex, and the paying for it, can somehow be completely neutral.
Not that I think all writers are such lunkheads that they can’t envisage a society where daddies don’t have their special little girls; rather that that tentacles of screwed up thinking, about rape, relationships, domination, the power dinamic and lots of other things to do with sex that I’m probably not even aware of, run so wide and so deep that you just couldn’t convincingly untangle it.
I think Heinlein provides a great cautionary tale of someone with a very creative imagination who nevertheless tried and failed to present a convincing case for a radically liberated sexuality in the future.
TheLady(Quote) (Reply)
TheLady, the idea that because something is a human need, and therefore paying for it is EVILLLLL really frustrates me.
I go to restaurants, do you? I like restaurants because I don’t have to cook and clean up (yay not doing dishes), I like restaurants because I can eat food I could NEVER cook well enough to be edible. I like restaurants because it’s an *event* instead of just another night of eating.
Food is a human need, pretty much inarguably more important one than sex. But we pay for food and don’t say a word about how “degrading” it is that we need/enjoy to do so.
I stopped listening to anything you said the moment you made that statement, because it is frankly so offbase.
TheDeviantE(Quote) (Reply)
Er, TheDeviantE, everything you said is valid, but your last sentence could be interpreted as inflammatory. I hope that’s not how you meant it, but whatever the case, this is just a gentle reminder to everyone not to personalize stuff.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
I wasn’t trying to be inflamatory, though I can see why it could/would be interpreted as such. It was mostly meant as a statement of fact, as in: truly I tuned out after that statement, if there were really valid points, I missed them all because that statement so turned me off.
TheDeviantE(Quote) (Reply)
Thanks for clarifying.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Deviant, you’re actually comparing an intimate act like sex with eating food at a restaurant? Cooking a meal for a stranger is one thing, giving him head is quite another. Apples & oranges.
Prostitution is unnatural. Sex isn’t a commodity; it isn’t bacon & eggs with a side of hashbrowns, okay? There’s this little thing called free love, and it trumps pay-for-play, any day. People who cannot acquire sex, due to a lack of attractiveness or whatever, should introduce themselves to masturbation. It is nobody’s job or duty to satisfy some stranger’s urges.
Tulip(Quote) (Reply)
I can understand the apples and oranges opinion, but I get nervous when I see the phrase “unnatural.” On the other hand, “patriarchal invention” often gets by me without a blink, so I’m obviously biased.
Either way, what we’re trying to do here is explore whether sex work can exist without patriarchy, not reduce it to unnatural…
Okay so another example. From tacky teenage high fantasy. Are you ready?
Mercedes Lackey. What? I hear you say. Well, I’m remembering the trilogy following Elspeth. Winds of Fate, etc. As well as the Gryphon series. They had at least two characters, namely Amberdrake & Silverfox, from a group called the Kaled’a'in, who were of a professional called a kestra’chern. Anyway, the kestra’chern role was kind of a combo counselor, massage therapist & and sex therapist. Traits necessary to the role, which had a somewhat shamanic flair, were empathy, sensuality, understanding of human nature.
Anyway, what I’m trying to get at, is not one form of sex work that might fit into this framework one that sought to work out the harm caused by sexual assault or abuse? These aren’t particularly worked out thoughts, but I’m thinking along the lines of exposure therapy (If you’re afraid of germs, you get exposed to germs in the presence of a therapist and then process the experience together) — but taking into account the intimacies of the work they were attempting.
[dave](Quote) (Reply)
Yes Tulip, I am actually indeed comparing the idea that sex is a human need, and thus using money to purchase it, makes it “degrading” to the human need of food, and the fact that we purchase it every day. But I think you could tell that, you just want to shame me for saying it.
I can also, coincidentally compare apples and oranges, and often do so (I prefer oranges on the whole myself, what with the citrus, though a good granny smith is wonderful).
Also, thank you SOOO much for telling me that one of my seriously considered career options/the career options of some of my best friends are “unnatural”. I know I base all of my decisions off the “naturalness” of that decision, that’s why I don’t ride in cars or use medicine.
It’s very gratifying to find that there is someone in this world that clearly respects the choices of people to decide for themselves what they find degrading or unnatural.
Lastly, (just so you can’t pretend that I think it’s all peaches and cream), yes sex work is hugely problematic as it stands in the world today. But this post wasn’t about whether sex work is problematic in the world as it stands today. It was about how to portray it in a fictional setting as part of a larger society that does not demean it and de-legitimize it. And I personally can’t think of all that many things that the Jennifer Kesler didn’t already say.
TheDeviantE(Quote) (Reply)
Tulip, where on earth do you get the idea that restauranting is “natural”? I can’t get past that assertion to respond to the rest of your post. I’m also having trouble with the fact that servers in restaurants are exposed to quite a bit of abuse. I’m not comparing the *degree* of abuse to what many sex workers experience, but the motivation behind the abuse – “this loser is beneath me, so I can treat him/her however the hell I feel like” – is the same. And I will add that cocktail waitresses are expected to endure getting pinched, groped, pulled into laps, and having comments made about their bodies with a smile, in exchange for making a little more in tips than a regular server, but nothing like what your average office worker – often completely free of any sort of harassment – makes.
If food selling is natural and sex selling not, how come they inspire the same bad attitudes in their clienteles and expose workers to abuse? The fact is, BOTH paying for food and paying for sex, like paying for medical advice, are an extension of the natural animal instinct to bargain. Even pets often grasp the idea of bartering – you do something for them, they do something for you – which makes me think it’s a universal animal instinct.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
“I’m also having trouble with the fact that servers in restaurants are exposed to quite a bit of abuse.”
Not to mention the people manning the till, fast-food workers, security*, theme park stafff, janitors…
Looking at it that way, the only way to have sex work that is seen as prestigious in a fictional world would be – unless you can find a way to elevate _the entire industry_ from being service industry – to have a society where it’s not considered acceptable to treat the people below you like shit. I’m not sure how you’d do that, outside of a fantasy world where robots do all the grunt work (and then we’d mistreat THEM).
* Which is odd when they can boot you, but I’ve seen a lot of contempt from some people for the security at Dragon*Con.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
Charles, that’s exactly why I said this in the article:
people believe all workers deserve basic respect and dignity. Otherwise, legally protected sex workers – like restaurant servers – will get some basic rights and protections, but still be made to feel worthless by asshole customers with entitlement issues.
We have two different kind of service providers. Lowly customer service staff and experts like doctors. We respect doctors and lawyers and so on because they supposedly have some sort of special education and expertise we’re in need of (and we even tend to overlook it when they’re clearly unfit to perform their jobs). But we see customer service staff as beneath us in the social hierarchy. They’re not doing anything we couldn’t do for ourselves (we imagine), so why respect them?
Whedon tried to portray a world where sex workers provided MORE than just a warm body to be screwed, and that expertise and education entitled them to the respect doctors enjoy. Good idea, except there will always be people who want to pay for someone to abuse, or can’t afford an “expert” and will settle for a shivering addict who can’t possibly sixteen yet. Getting sex workers the protection customer service people enjoy is a start, but then they’d still be exposed to all this shit that class endures. Which includes not only abuse from customers, but companies like Wal-Mart who have been sued *multiple times* for not paying correct wages, yet they keep doing it because in the end the awards from the court cost less than the wages themselves. It’s sick, and as long as a fictional society retains the sickness of our real one, I don’t see how sex work can be a largely positive thing.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
This got me thinking: what would a writer have to do to create a fictional a society in which sex work is positive, safe and fulfilling for both workers and clients, and considered a good thing by society?
This can absolutely NEVER work. There is no way a society can ever attain the kind of sex work you describe and any writing attempting to do so would ring incredibly false. Human nature will never allow that kind of prostitution to exist.
The whole point of a sex worker is that they provide a service regardless of their own desires or feelings. If sex work was fulfilling for both partners it wouldn’t be sex work, it would be a sexual relationship. No one would get paid as both would be working for the others pleasure.
I am always disgusted with the presentation of prostitution as potentially positive for a society. Prostitution is generally what abused kids with little education wind up doing for extra money- no one with real choices would be willing to put up with what they do on a regular basis.
It’s just an all around bad idea for people to even think that they can organize prostitution to be a contributing positive service to society because it will never be such a thing. It’s a soul sucking occupation that only the desperate will take and the prostitute’s needs, well being and enjoyment are utterly moot points to the client and often to society at large.
Also, there will never be a way to create a society in which people don’t feel jealousy and betrayal at their partner having sex with someone else. That’s a ridiculous notion that would require the entire rewiring of the human brain in order to be feasible. So, regardless of whether marriage as an institution lasts, the emotions of jealousy and hurt will continue to inhabit the human mind.
Prostitution is so harmful and horrible, I just hate it when the media tries to make it seem positive. What crap!
DHS(Quote) (Reply)
If sex work was fulfilling for both partners it wouldn’t be sex work, it would be a sexual relationship.
Your logic is circular. For this statement to be true, you must presume that ANYTIME someone enjoys a task they’re getting paid for, it’s not really work. Like, if a doctor enjoys making people feel better, it’s not really work.
There is no rule in the universe that a transaction can’t be win-win. That’s true with purchases of both goods and services.
I almost didn’t allow your comment through moderation because it’s just preposterous to state your opinion as fact the way you do. There are definitely sex workers who consider their work a good career, and did not take it out of desperation. You are basically saying that all those people are liars or deluded, and you are not qualified to make any such judgment.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
“there will never be a way to create a society in which people don’t feel jealousy and betrayal at their partner having sex with someone else”
Factually inaccurate – we already have people (swingers, the polyamorous etc) who clash with that.
Charles RB(Quote) (Reply)
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