When I was a kid, I once asked my mother what a whore was. (I’d heard the word in the Simon & Garfunkel song “The Boxer.”) She said, with obvious discomfort, that it was “a woman who sold her body.” I found this entirely confusing: I pictured someone cutting off their arms and legs and selling them. I had no idea why anyone would want to buy someone else’s body parts — and I had no idea how you could earn a sustainable living that way. It seemed like a career with a very short arc.

I still find the phrase entirely confusing. It makes no sense.

Like I said in yesterday’s post: A prostitute is not someone who “sells their body.” A prostitute is someone who charges money for a service. As retired prostitute Carol Queen put it in my book Paying For it: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients, “We sex workers do not sell our bodies. We ask you to pay for our time.” (For that matter, a prostitute is also not necessarily a woman…. but that’s a rant for another time.)

There are people in the world with professions that you could consider “selling your body.” Egg donors; plasma donors; sperm donors. I used to hear rumors (no idea if they’re true) that some universities would pay you money if you bequeathed them your body for medical research after you died: that could certainly be considered “selling your body.”

But charging money for sex is no more “selling your body” than charging money for, say, physical therapy or massage, giving haircuts or giving manicures. There are lots of professions that charge money for time spent providing persona, hands-on services. We don’t say that these people are “selling their bodies.”

And if we don’t want to marginalize and dehumanize sex workers — and horribly confuse future generations of young Simon & Garfunkel fans — we should stop saying that this is what prostitutes are doing.

There’s a widely-held myth about sex work and sex workers: I ran into it again recently (don’t remember where, sorry), and I want to talk about it and eviscerate it.

The myth: Prostitutes and other sex workers can’t choose their customers. They have to have sex with anyone who offers to pay.

When you think about this for ten seconds, you should realize that it makes no sense. People in any other service profession can, and do, turn down customers they don’t want to work with. Therapists, car mechanics, gardeners, hair stylists, nannies… you name it. There are a few exceptions — emergency room doctors leap to mind — but for the most part, it’s understood that, as long as they’re obeying non-discrimination laws, service professionals reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. (My hair stylist has told me long, entertaining stories about clients she’s fired.) So it’s kind of weird to assume that sex workers would be the exception.

Yes, there are some sex workers for whom this isn’t true: ones who are in extreme dire financial straits, or ones who work for extremely abusive and exploitatative brothels. But it’s by no means an inherent part of the industry.

So why would people assume that it is? Continue reading “Sex Work and the Power of Choice” →

So I was going to ask this anyway. But upon seeing the completely amazing conversation that started yesterday — the one about about men who date women feeling a social expectation to make the first move in dating and sex — I definitely want to ask it now.

Women who date men: Do you feel a social expectation to let men make the first move in dating and sex? It’s for a piece I’m writing for AlterNet.

If you do: Can you say more about that? How has this affected you? How has it affected your dating life and your relationships? How has it affected other people in your life — women, men, or alternatively gendered? If you’re not actively dating men now (because you’re partnered, have decided to be single, are primarily pursuing other women, etc.) but have in the past — how has this affected you in the past?

You can answer in the comments — or, if you prefer more privacy than that, you can email me, greta (at) gretachristina (dot) com. Again: This is for a piece I’m writing, so please let me know how you want your name cited if I quote you, or if you want to only be quoted anonymously, or what. (If you don’t say otherwise, I’ll assume it’s okay to quote you with handle or first name only.) Thanks!

I have a question for men who date women (it’s for a piece I’m writing for AlterNet): Do you feel a social expectation to make the first move in dating and sex?

If you do: Can you say more about that? How has this affected you? How has it affected your dating life and your relationships? How has it affected other people in your life — men, women, or alternatively gendered? If you’re not actively dating women now (because you’re partnered, have decided to be single, are primarily pursuing other men, etc.) but have in the past — how has this affected you in the past?

And if you don’t feel this — if you either don’t think such an expectation exists, or you think it exists but don’t feel like it’s affected your life — please tell me about that as well.

You can answer in the comments — or, if you prefer more privacy than that, you can email me, greta (at) gretachristina (dot) com. Again: This is for a piece I’m writing, so please let me know how you want your name cited if I quote you, or if you want to only be quoted anonymously, or what. (If you don’t say otherwise, I’ll assume it’s okay to quote you with handle or first name only.) Thanks!

Why do some women have casual sex?

Let me re-phrase that. Why have I had casual sex?

The phenomenon of women who have sex for its own sake seems to baffle many people. It’s widely believed that women have sex for love, commitment, poor self-control, to manipulate men, to please men, to make babies, to sooth their low self-esteem, and just about any reason at all other than their own pleasure. (While men, of course, are rutting horndogs who just want to stick it in the nearest wet hole available.) Sex, according to this trope, is by its nature a commodity that women possess and men are trying to obtain… and the phenomenon of women who are “giving it away,” who are defying these assumptions and treating sex as a pleasurable interaction between equals, is making the punditocracy piss all over itself.

Mark Regnerus, Slate: “If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we’d be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on.” Rachel Simmons, relationship advice columnist for Teen Vogue: “These letters worry me. They signify a growing trend in girls’ sexual lives where they are giving themselves to guys on guys’ terms. They hook up first and ask later. ” Bill O’Reilly: “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex.” Susan Walsh, Hooking Up Smart: “They cannot see that as she [self-proclaimed proud- and- happy slut Jaclyn Friedman] proclaims her detachment from sex, she gets emotionally wounded every single time. They take heart from her proclamation that sluthood is a healing thing. Ms. Friedman is a hot mess. Craiglist Casual Encounters was not a miracle, it was a disaster that broke her heart again. I hope she does find Love, the whole enchilada.” Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both… oh, just look at the title.

And this push-poll tendency is shared by many of these “Why on earth would women want casual hook-ups? pundits. They’re not asking the question, “Why do some women have casual sex?” They’re asking the question, “Why on earth would some women have casual sex, when it’s so clearly a bad idea that will do them and other women harm and is obviously not in their best interest?” And they’re doing this despite research showing that casual sex isn’t, in fact, psychologically harmful in young adults. They’re basing their questions on the common assumption that women’s natural state is to keep their legs closed unless they’ve got their hands on marriage or commitment… and that women who don’t are some sort of baffling phenomenon that needs to be explained.

So I thought I’d try to explain it.

I’ve had a lot of experience with casual sex. It’s been a while, and I’m not particularly interested in it anymore… but for many years, pretty much all the sex I had fell somewhere on the “casual” spectrum. Personal ad hookups; occasional sex with friends; sex clubs and sex parties; ongoing sexual friendships… that’s what my sex life looked like for a long time.

And needless to say — but I’m going to say it anyway — a lot of this casual sex was a good idea. A wonderful idea, in fact. A lot of it was done for excellent, healthy reasons. And the effect it’s had on my sex life and my love life has been overwhelmingly positive.

You want to know why I had it? Here’s why. Continue reading “Five Good Reasons Why I've Hooked Up” →