I already posted about reading one sex worker’s blog; that’s not the only one that got my attention recently.
I’ve been reading College Call Girl. She has been on a bit of a break for the last three weeks, and I don’t know her personally, so I have no idea when or if she’s coming back, but I keep hoping.
Now, some folks may think that this is light reading, or one-handed reading. And sometimes it is. But she alternates between the glib and hot, soul-searching, and flat-out patriarchy-blaming; so that passages like this:
Even with all the admittedly sinful diddling and fingering and rubbing and stroking I had done before, I had never once done something as terrible, as sacrilegious as what I found myself doing now.
I was masturbating to the Bible.
I don’t remember what section in particular it was that got me so steamed up, although I think it was in the Old Testament.
rub shoulders with passages like this:
One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.
I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.
Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.
She’s not a representative sample; she’s one woman from a particular social position (white, class-privileged, etc.). She doesn’t represent all sex workers — nobody could, or should, or should be expected to. She represents her own experience; which is ambiguous and nuanced. She both loves and hates sex work; she’s honest about keeping it light to keep her audience entertained, and honest that she knows this glamorizes and whitewashes her own experiences:
But there’s another side to this deal that I’m afraid I haven’t shown you. It’s not easy to write about prostitution in a totally honest way because it is painful… I am a tangle of contradictions. I am not ashamed of my choices and I will fully defend mine or anyone else’s right to make them. But when you ask me if you should do this? My immediate instinct is a loud, desperate no.
Along her road of self-reflective posts, CCG put up one that I’ll probably never forget, [Trigger Warning] the sort of speaking out that one woman can do to make thousands of other women feel less alone:
The Number is Eight
I have been sexually assaulted more than once. Each time that it happened to me, I felt that extenuating circumstances kept it from truly being rape. I was working as a prostitute, he was my boyfriend, I was drunk, I got in the car. I never believed that I had fought hard enough. I made excuses for the men who hurt me; I told myself “he didn’t know what he was doing.” When I spoke about my experiences with sexual assault (which I did very rarely), I would say only that “a lot of bad things have happened to me.”
And she lists them. And she tells the story. And every one will resonate with some woman out there who reads it, who will know that it wasn’t just her; that it wasn’t her fault; that what happened to her was wrong.
Nothing I ever write will matter that much.