First and foremost: This blog will assume you have some awareness of issues such as sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and various types of privileges. This blog will assume you understand the term “male privilege”, know the difference between identifying as transgendered vs. transsexual, and that you know WHY something like “reverse racism” cannot exist.
The contributors on this blog are not here to give you Feminism 101 lectures in every single post we make, we’re not here to educate you on the finer nuances of Racism and white privilege and we don’t want to spend precious time dwelling on the basics when we could be ranting atop our soap boxes.
Due to intersectionality, all of the above listed issues (plus several more) play a large part in discussing the issues of sex workers, as sex workers come from every demographic you can conceive of. And when you belong to one marginalised group, sex work can be a refuge – flexible working hours for handsome remuneration in an industry you will never be out of work in can be extremely attractive to scores of people for a variety of reasons.
But not only this, having an understanding – or even a passion for – of the political issues of marginalised groups will potentially enable you to better understand the issues of sex workers and what we’re so damned angry about anyway.
I have always found analogies to be a useful tool, but before I employ them here I want to make it very clear that while there are significant similarities between the discrimination and oppression faced by sex workers to those faced by other marginalised groups, and consequently similar issues, belonging to one marginalised group does not automatically mean a person will understand fully the issues and needs of another. It may give someone greater capacity to emphasise, but nothing compares to lived experience. Let me repeat that: NOTHING compares to lived experience.
If you are here because you are a geek interested in political issues, particularly those concerning privilege in fandom, but perhaps you don’t get what us mouthy whores are all riled up about, here’s that disclaimed analogy:
Let’s say you’re surfing the net and you come across yet another repetitive, racist discussion about why the next regeneration of the Doctor could not be played by a POC, or your favourite show introduces yet another character played by a POC and you start counting the days until that character is brutally killed off, how do you feel?
Well, let me tell you how I feel whenever I read yet another fan fiction in which a poor oppressed whore is rescued by the writer‘s favourite character, or read a comic in which a crack addict street hooker is abused by her pimp or watch a show where a supposedly ‘radical’ depiction of whores is all the rage but is actually elitist and classist and sets up ideas of ‘good whores’ and how ‘sex work would be ok if only it was ALL like THIS!’ (Joss Whedon, I‘m looking at YOU and I ain‘t smiling), I feel: angry. No, make that infuriated. I feel a bone-aching weariness, a sense of despair, imploring my friends: ‘sweet Jesus, does it ever END?’ I feel depressed and futile and frustrated. I feel sickened that there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people out there swallowing this goop and taking it on as representative of my identity. I feel indignant, and righteous and like I don’t know how I can keep on ploughing on with this anger every single day because society is so screwed up about sex that it wants to fetishise, objectify and exploit me by misrepresenting me as some grotesque stereotype or cliché to further some trite, unimaginative plot.
Because make no mistake about it: when it’s me who’s watching or reading, the whore represented is not an archetype or some unconnected plot device. It’s me. It’s my life. The life of so many of my friends. Our profession. Our profession just also happens to have a vast amount of stigma attached to it that makes our lives tend to be a series of tricky negotiations. We don’t really want to see further reinforcement of that poppycock when we switch on our televisions to relax. But, lucky us…
Like women, like queers, like the disabled, like POC, whores are subjected to a white, male and heterosexually dominated system that exoticises us and represents us poorly at best and usually highly offensively even when the objective is well meaning (JOSS WHEDON). Again, the specific and individual issues encountered by each group is highly unique and cannot be fully comprehended by anything but lived experience; nonetheless there are parallels and intersectionality is a significant player. As just an example, I am a queer female whore.
There are some amazing resources out there dedicated to issues in fandom such as privilege, racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, classism, and transphobia where some seriously awesome discussion happens. I’m a devourer of these resources because I’m passionate about these issues AND I’m a geek and I’m passionately interested in how greater cultural tropes manifest themselves within subcultures and how we, as a community, can deconstruct them.
And then I noticed that there was nothing dedicated to whores in pop and geek culture.
I certainly knew this was not due to any shortage of geek whores out there. Geek whores are everywhere. And it’s certainly not due to any shortage of representations of whores in pop and geek culture.
It’s an interesting thing about being a whore. I’ve always said it’s the last test of how radical someone truly is. Sex-positive feminists, gay rights activists, devoted anarchists – all of them have stopped, choked, turned a funny colour and then showed their prejudice to learn that yes, indeed, there is a whore in their midst. They can get uncomfortable or outright hostile. Some just get thoughtlessly inquisitive, forgetting entirely that they don’t particularly enjoy it when they go to Cousin Sue’s wedding and all their relatives want to know in blow-by-blow detail what gay sex is really like. Some say it’s completely awesome and, in a sad way, they really mean it although the truth is you’ve changed in their eyes. You’re no longer you, you’re a Whore. You’re not awesome because you just are, your awesomeness is intrinsically attached to your Whoredom. This is the moment when you begin to understand what it might feel like to be the Token. The Token Gay Friend or the Token POC Friend.
It doesn’t matter what sort of reaction they have to you, their perspective of you has altered. More often than not, it is tainted, because they are as much victims of a sexphobic society as any of us, and even as “cool” as they might think it is, they’re thinking to themselves: “but I don’t understand how you can do it. I could never do it.”
But damn, you’re a great person to have at parties. You’ve got Stories.
So I’m not all that surprised to see there’s not too much discussion by whores on the representation of whores in pop and geek culture. There can be just as much reluctance to out oneself on line as in any other situation.
But I think it needs to start happening.
Geeks, like greater society, are endlessly fascinated by whores. Why?
Well, to put it simply: whores have sex. LOTS of sex.
Not all of this sex is typical penis-in-vagina sex. Some of this sex is fist up arse, or ritualised boot polishing or naughty words cooed down phone lines or gyrating groin in slack-jawed face.
Regardless, the whore manifests sexual energy in all her/his many forms and types.
And, as it turns out, society has this small hangup about sex.
Most people love sex, or like it, or at the very least want to like it. Many people spend a great deal of time thinking about it. Still other people spend a lot of time working out how to get more of it. Then there are those who have plenty but don’t like what they’re getting but put up with it cos they think they should. Then there are those who won’t stop until they get exactly what they want. Sex sells, as the saying goes, and never mind the sex industry – just take a look at any dozens of magazine covers, advertisements, television programming and all the other various media we’re constantly inundated with. And yes, most of these highly sexualised images focus on women, which is a whole other loaded issue on its own.
Yet at the same time this cultural obsession with sex dominates our consciousness, it is still vastly stigmatised. There is an enormous sense of shame and inhibition around sex, largely focused on either eliminating the desire for it or making sure it only happens in the appropriate ways. The appropriate ways, of course, have largely been dictated by religious bodies led by men with the objective of controlling people. As a consequence, these mandates have become intrinsically intertwined with sexism, racism and heteronormatism. Although men certainly do not escape the burden of guilt attached to sex, it is primarily focused on women. The whole “virgin/whore” dichotomy no woman can ever seem to escape for any reason, anywhere, ever. The cultural image of a whore is usually female. But you can add in hefty doses of stigma against homosexuals and transsexuals too and anyone else who doesn’t fit the heteronormative aspirational standard, like the disabled (mental or physical – towards whom there is a truly revolting and highly oppressive attitude of ‘those people shouldn’t be having sex‘!!) and you will find all of these people working within the sex industry. They have the double burden of being seen as “abnormal” by the majority of society and sexually vilified accordingly (if you must be gay, can’t you at least be celibate about it?) and so the concept they charge for sex is received with increased outrage but also with that delightful double standard attitude of “well, what else could such degenerates do, anyway?”
That’s the final insult, really: we are in a job because there’s a need. But goddamn if any “decent” person is going to admit to that, even as they’re sneaking out the backdoor of the local brothel.
Sex work is work. It can be good work, boring work or lousy work and sometimes all three in one shift, just like any other job. It is a job like any other. Sex work can be confronting or empowering. Sex work can be frustrating or touching. Sex work can be exhausting, educational, depressing, inspirational, fun, tiresome, hilarious or infuriating. If this sounds like your work experience, maybe you’re beginning to get it.
But more than anything else?
Sex workers are people.
We are not stereotypes. We are not cliches or plot devices. We are not tokens.
And here, in this blog, is where a bunch of rowdy geek whores are going to get angry every time we’re treated as though we are in our fandoms of choice.
