Dear Minerva,
Let’s be honest. It was never your goal to start a philosophical debate about prostitution. Your goal was to preach and grandstand and you’ve done a fine job of that.
Speaking of jobs, I can assure you that whatever employment you retain would seem equally unscrupulous and/or tedious to a fair percentage of our country’s sex trade workers. Moreover, some hookers have likely done labour akin to yours and thought, “This is totally demoralizing. I’d much rather suck a dick.” Maybe they even do your profession as a hobby (let’s say you’re a cook or a tax accountant) and get great satisfaction out of it. It would likely not even occur to them to judge a person for making money off what they cheerfully do for free.
I can’t believe I have to ask you this but since your parents had such overreaching ambitions when they named you I must: are you happy at your work? If so, does this mean you shouldn’t be paid for it? Minerva you fucking dolt, you haven’t charged for one-night stands because you are not a prostitute. (Many prostitutes don’t charge for one night stands either. When they’re not working.) On the consumer end of that very obvious fact, some people don’t have the luxury of unpaid one-night stands or perhaps they worry that they might stick it into some confused bitch that left her tin foil helmet at home and they want to avoid this possibility by maintaining a certified distance.
Chris is not a wanker. Simply put, he is like millions of decent men, a customer of the sex trade. As such, he deserves to have an exchange where he doesn’t feel like he’s raping someone and potentially lining the pockets of traffickers. As someone who uses emotionally and physically intimate services like massage and psychotherapy, I wish for my providers to be content and enthusiastic, too. Since I respect them as professionals (and am paying them significantly more an hour than I make) and I assume they have willingly chosen this line of work, I don’t see why they should feel and act anything but.
Chris obviously understands that there’s no HR at massage parlours and escort agencies as well as some workers who would rather not be there. It would really help if people stopped conflating them with all sex workers.
I don’t even know how to address the issue of apathy and sadness in sex professionals and their intimate lives because as a sex columnist and really just as a friend and a sister and a daughter and fucking person in this world, I see so many people who are apathetic and sad in their sex lives regardless of their profession. It just makes me want to cry and scream and lie on my living room floor drinking gin and listening to “Strings of Nashville” by Pavement over and over.
One thing you say is correct, however. We can’t resolve the philosophical debate around prostitution in one column. We can resolve it in one word: decriminalization.
