Sex Work Is A Conversation.

As I take a puff, I can taste my own past in my mouth. I haven't smoked this brand of cigarettes in years, eight-years, I think, if memory serves me well. And it does, doesn't it? Memory *serves*. What was it that Victor Hugo said? *Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress and memory is the servant.* Normative roles notwithstanding, I think I understand what he meant, intelligence is the faithful companion, imagination is the exciting sojourn in which you may lose yourself all too easily and memory is cornerstone upon which you rely for everything and it serves you as well as you invest into it. I have excellent memory, not because I sharpen my mind and learn well, no, I have excellent memory because I obsess. I don't obsess over words that were spoken, dates or places, I obsess over what I *felt* and everything else comes back around it. As I sit here, smoking a cigarette from my past, my obsessive memory serves me the vivid feelings of a time gone by.

She talks to me about the sex-workers in the area and I tell her that I used to be one. Why did I tell her that? I tell everyone, well, I don't tell everyone, but if it comes up in conversation and I can contribute to that conversation with a revelation that qualifies me to speak about a subject, I tell everyone. When I was young, I used to believe that I am open about that part of my life because it is empowering to claim it. Sometimes, it is. There is undoubtedly some power to using your sex for your own benefit as opposed to the benefit of the men who have profited off of women's bodies for centuries and there is some empowerment to claiming that power. Nothing scares society more than a woman who wears her perceived-depravity like a crown, a woman who brandishes her secrets so openly they can no longer be used against her, a woman who rejects the burden of reputation. But none of this, none of my life, nor my empowerment, exist in a vacuum. Most empowered sex-work is a lie.

I can't speak for the entire world but the majority of sex-workers where I live did not choose this life for the empowerment of it. Hell, they didn't even choose it. They do not practise it to serve themselves either. The advent of the digital age has created a chasm in the world of sex, there are those of us, mostly privileged women, who have the option to embark upon sex-work as an adventure, but more importantly, we have the means and avenues to practise what we do with agency, choice and autonomy because we are English-speaking women with multiple streams of income who know our rights. There is a tendency in this group to distance ourselves from "traditional sex-work". I have been working on a series of pieces about the industry of sugar (that's what I have been calling it anyway, sugar babies/daddies/mommies/whathaveyou), and in doing so I have spoken to dozens of people who engage in these relationships and most of them insist what they do isn't sex-work. The men who partake even go so far as to say that all relationships are transactional, this one is just an open transaction. I can see a case being made for that but I don't want to make it. Far be it for me to insist that it is sex-work for someone else, but I will say that if I did it, I would call it sex-work, if for no reason other than the fact that this "othering" of "traditional sex-work" makes it seem like it is dirty and wrong and results in its relegation to the trenches where nothing can ever get better and I think it's better to open up the definition of sex-work instead of holding it closed and exclusive. The argument I heard most often is that "sex-work" is about women who do this without a choice but I would argue that if they are doing it without choice, it's not sex work anyway, it is trafficking.

That's neither here nor there, but the social environment within which sex-work exists (and not just the lack of choice or the stigma, but also the divide) is why I hold off on claiming total empowerment. My voice has the potential to be louder than the voices of those who are bound by the chains of family, society and exploitation, and that is solely because of my privilege, and my blanket claims of the enlightenment of sex-work have the potential to exclude other forms of sex-work from this conversation. It has the potential to paint too rosy a picture and it's not rosy, even within the sugaring-section of work, the same societal conditions that are demanded of women exist. Women lie about their ages because they feel like they have to, they allow these men to keep track of them (and evidently some of them do it by sending gifts home to check if they are home), they are obligated to hide this part of their lives from actual potential suitors and families, they dress and behave like "girly girls" because that is what the men like, the key to maximizing their earnings is to present as "classy" (ie: maintain that they aren't like "those cheap whores" who don't have any respect for themselves: actual quote), many of the men expect monogamy and it is given and most importantly, most of the men, do not think highly of the women they engage/employ. Even ones who go on websites specifically designed to hook up sugar daddies and babies (and a lot of them don't even have the option for a woman to sign up as a sugar daddy), judge the very women in whom they are interested for asking for the money that comprises the very transaction they claim exists in every relationship anyway.

For me sex-work was a radical emancipation from the bounds of society, and so it is for many other people as well, but when you drink the koolaid, you drink the poison along with the sugar. Perfectly empowered sex work, requires a perfectly empowered society within which it is practised and the less we discuss this, the worse it gets. I didn't realise this when I was younger, when I made proclamations of enlightened sex-work in my early-twenties I was willingly looking at a small part of the picture because I wanted to take something that has been used to exploit women and find my empowerment in it. It's like my cat, okay? She likes to chase water on the bathroom floor. Anytime anyone is in the bathroom, they must take the health-faucet and create little rivulets for her to chase on the bathroom floor. She never catches it, of course, it's water, but when it approaches the drain, she starts to drink it. She doesn't realise that along with the water, she's also drinking all the dirt that lives on the bathroom floor but she's convinced she must catch water this way and so she ignores all that comes with it.

As did I.

Then why, why do I still tell people that I used to be a sex-worker? Surely, it would be better to refrain. I do it because I fear eacho-chambers. At a point, I had become used to talking about my sex-work in certain environments, ones comprised mostly of sex-positive individuals whose values don't denigrate sex-work. That's the internet thing. You can always find a place where you are a hero and convince yourself of it. When I talk about my sex-work on the internet, whether that is here, in articles I may write or on other social-media, my audience is curated to be supportive and appreciative. I like that, of course, but when I tell people in the real, physical world, my audience is not curated, and their reactions are very different. It seems a more worthwhile use for my alleged empowerment to reveal myself to people who are uncomfortable with what I did. The ones who would reject a woman because of what she used to do. The ones who have a narrow view of sex work, regardless of choice, they view it as a moral failing. It is harder to reveal such information to the people who make up most of the fabric of society but it is from speaking to them that I realised I had missed so much about the industry in which I once worked because I was so biased by my need to have a positive experience.

And I did, I really did, and I want that possibility to be known, but I also need to know that the world isn't a comment section comprised of people who already like me. The world isn't a place where women who take ownership of their sex are lauded. It is a precarious balance, having this conversation of openness and empowerment, while ensuring that the entire picture is presented and not just the positive, and it is harder because there are spaces, like this one, where it is more important to talk about the stigma and exploitation we may miss when we take the cloth of enlightenment, and there are places where it is more important to talk about the choice, autonomy and agency of voluntary sex-workers because both those things disrupt the echo-chamber. But in both those spaces, it is most important, to open yourself up to the world.

That's why I tell people.

I don't know everything and my opinions on sex-work evolve as I grow and learn, but the reason they evolve is because I open myself up. Whether what I receive is praise, chastisement, information, perspective or stigma is unknowable until I speak and so I speak. I speak because, what if the person had a different experience in a similar field and I will never know because I was hiding what allegedly empowered me so she doesn't think less of me? What if someone has a valuable contradiction to offer to something I have come to believe and I will neve know because I was hiding my life? What if someone had a great experience as well and they weren't sure they could be open about that because no one else was saying it? What if someone had a terrible experience and they weren't saying it because everyone else said the contrary? I will never be able to present a complete picture because I am but one piece of the jigsaw, but the more I speak, the more conversation ensues about the subject, and the more pieces of the puzzle begin to reveal themselves. I don't need sex work to be empowered, I don't need to prove it is inherently exploitative and always will be, I need to open myself up, so I may attach myself to the picture that is already being built. Whether I like it or not, I am part of the picture, and even though it took me a while, I also realise I am just one part of the picture, I could hold my tongue and make my life easier or harder, but I tell people, because I don't want to be part of this conversation in secret.

I tell people because the vivid memories I feel could change something for someone or revealing them could change something for me.

Whatever it is.

I tell because I can, because that is a better use for my privilege that painting over the picture with rose-coloured brush-strokes. I tell because it's good for my perspective to see the stigma from which I was able to insulate myself. I tell because that is how I learn. I tell because I hope for a more open world. I tell because I want to learn. I tell because women deserve better. I tell because I must.

(And I just realised I accidentally quoted Victor Hugo in a conversation about sex work and that is the happiest coincidence that has ever occured. If you don't know what I am talking about Google "Victor Hugo, funeral, brothels, you are welcome).