Sex industry desk job

Dear Sasha,I am a young analyst (though I prefer the title anal-yst!) who is tired of working for outdated and boring corporations. I would like to find a job in my field at a company that is geared towards my personal interests: sexuality and BDSM. I’m having a hard time finding work in that field because, normally, sex-related companies are small-scale and don’t need someone for things such as quality control, forecasting, logistics, project management and analyzing. I’m wondering if you can suggest some positions (no, not the sexual kind!) that might suit me in the sex industry.

—Backseat Bebe

Dear Backseat,

I had an e-mail exchange with Gill Lamon who handles IT for worker-owned sex shop Come As You Are. Gill says, “The sex industry seems really exciting and sexy from the outside, and don’t get me wrong, there’s lots that’s exciting about working in a sex shop or strip club or porn company but from the perspective of an IT chump like me, or a financial analyst like your reader, the job is the same whether you’re counting vibrators or counting beans. When our server goes down, it isn’t sexy to get it back up just because it has porn on it.”

Even people who work on the sex-providing side of the business can attest to its recurrent predictability. You may fantasize about shoving unlubricated office supplies up your boss’s ass, but for the women who actually get paid to do it, well, it’s just another day in the dungeon with some quivering CEO.

“If your reader wants to do a straight job in a sexy company,” advises Gill, “there are some larger companies in the sex industry who would need someone with her qualifications. Quality control? Go get a job with a sex toy manufacturer—there are lots of them. Forecasting?  Private Media Group [one of Europe’s biggest providers of hardcore porn] had an IPO a while back. Check them out. Project Management? Formerly worker-owned Good Vibrations was acquired by a big distribution company. Maybe see if they need some help.”

Do keep in mind, though, that in some of these suggested cases, you will be working for large companies and as a result may find your personal values and interests continuing to be compromised. The sex product industry isn’t famous for its people-before-profits credo, and in fact, some of the most shoddy manufacturing regulations in the world exist in this business.

If you want to work for a smaller company (check out this link on “ethical” sex toys at www.drpetra.co.uk/blog/?p=429) more invested in quality products and legitimate sex education, Gill’s advice is to do what almost everyone avoiding the corporate slog does: diversify your skill set. “Financial skills are great, but for most [small] companies in this industry, those skills are only useful a couple of days out of the month, so you need to find things that make you useful on all the other days.” And of course, there’s the income issue. “It is only the very lucky among us who do not have to choose between love and money,” notes Gill.  “I went from making more than 80 grand a year to nine dollars an hour when I started at CAYA.” Gill says it was totally worth it if only just to “shake the panic attacks,” but cautions people when they’re considering the change.

Dear Sasha, Over the past two years, almost every guy that I sleep with develops strep throat shortly after we hook up. What is going on? Could I be a carrier of strep throat? Could it be transmitted via my vagina or is kissing enough to spread it to another person?

—AC

Dear AC,

You can get a version of strep in your vagina (known as strep B) but it is not transmitted sexually nor would it manifest in the throat—this is the home of strep A and strep A can certainly be passed on by kissing. An STI nurse confirmed that “someone can be a chronic carrier of strep, and despite multiple antibiotic treatments, it can’t be eradicated.” She suggests you go to your GP, get tested and take it from there. Internet reading I’ve done suggests it’s an immune system issue, so your doctor may suggest a more healthy diet to boost yours.

Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM