A stripper wants to end the stigma imposed on people employed in her industry By Wrenna Robertson, March 7, 2012
Wrenna Robertson loves her job as a stripper, and just because she has a great university education, she doesn’t feel that she should be obliged to quit.
There’s a story not often told about sex work. It’s a story that most of society would scoff at, write off as a deluded fantasy. Many of us won’t allow it to be true.
I am a sex worker, and even I felt that it was too tall a tale to tell.
It’s the story of the empowered sex worker who finds healing through her work, the sex worker who has become a more whole person because of what she does. But it is a story that rings true for many of the incredible women and men I have had the pleasure of knowing, women and men who work as strippers, escorts, tantric practitioners, porn actors, and erotic masseurs.
I have been stripping for half of my life—since just days after my 18th birthday. Almost immediately, I became aware of the judgment that would come my way from my partner, friends, parents, and siblings. They
riends, parents, and siblings. They all expressed their disappointment in me for having chosen to make money by taking my clothes off for strangers. When I explained to people that I was doing it to save money for university, they eased off a bit, conceding that it was, indeed, a good way to put oneself through school.
Eighteen years later, I’m still stripping. It’s gotten harder in the past few years to explain this. For most of my years in the industry, I have been a university student. When I was younger, it was a very plausible story: the stripper working her way through college. I finished one degree, entered my mid-twenties, decided I was enjoying life too much as it was, so I continued stripping and headed back to school for another degree.
I travelled a lot, earned the envy of others while at the same time accumulating greater disdain. It was celebrated that I was so committed to my education, so well travelled and free-spirited, but there was a growing sense of impatience among my loved ones about when I would exit the sex industry. I internalized the knowledge that I was letting my parents down. I was the first in the family to get a university education (financed by my stripping career, mind you), but I wasn’t doing anything that my parents could share with their friends. They were getting bored of telling people that I was a student. That story was getting old. Partners asked me when I planned to quit. Clients asked me when I would quit.
Apparently, when you are in the sex industry, the only way to keep it remotely respectable is to have a clearly mapped-out plan for your escape. It doesn’t matter if you are happy, healthy, satisfied. You must have an exit plan.
I really bought into this. I held my degrees up in defence of my career. See? I have a plan! I’m educating myself! The older I got, the less believable was my story. I even started to doubt it myself. My partner demanded that I set an exit date. I understood. It was cool to be a stripper while you were young, but in your thirties? Time to grow up and get a real job. I began to see how I used my education to legitimize myself, my trade, but that wasn’t going to last forever.
Clients always ask me what else I do, and I try so hard to be okay with telling them that I’m just a stripper. Why can’t I be just a stripper, when a waitress can be just a waitress, a construction worker just a construction worker? Why should it matter one iota that I have a university education? I don’t plan on using it to get a job one day. You might tell me that my education was still a very valuable experience, that I have gained so much from it. Why can’t my 18 years as a stripper have value? The much greater lessons I’ve learned in life have come from a strip bar rather than from a place of supposed “higher learning”.
I’ve also learned that I am not alone. With this new outlook, I hosted a gathering for empowered sex workers. The theme was “the therapeutic value of sex work”, so it attracted those men and women in the profession who see its value. I am very aware that the views and experiences expressed here are not representative of all sex workers. These men and women, like me, are not survival sex workers. We are not marginalized individuals who are unable to find work outside of the sex trade. We are inspired, empowered individuals who have found a calling and a passion for sex work. We have among us numerous university degrees at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, many years of study in other institutes of learning. We own successful “straight” businesses, have left well-paying, socially acceptable yet ultimately unfulfilling jobs to heed our calling.
And we feel that it is time that our voices be heard. Sex work can be healing work.
Serena, an escort for more than a year, feels like her experiences have catalyzed so much positive change in her that the past year has felt like a rebirth. She said she sees a strong interconnection with sex and healing, for herself as well as for her clients. On her own path of personal growth and healing, she has come to see how she can be the facilitator of another’s healing. She sees the mutual growth and connection that can occur.
Serena’s work has made her aware of her very unique abilities: a recent interaction with a handicapped man called on the skills she acquired working with disabled individuals in group homes. “Sex work is so much more than just spreading your legs,”she said. “It’s the interpersonal skills which are so vital, so complex.” When she recognized the incredible gift, the essential therapy, the connection and compassion she was providing this man, she found herself in a profound state of self-love.
James Smith spent 15 years developing his strengths as a counsellor, masseur, and energy healer. Four years ago, he felt the call to leave his day job, and he envisioned himself as a hands-on sexual healer. When he decided to take the step, it led him to a path of awakening, growth, and healing, and his years of study coalesced into a unique form of tantric massage that he offers to men, women, and couples in his Vancouver body-care business.
He sees the space he creates with his clients as a “sacred container, wherein anything is free to emerge”. He helps clients through the traumas of incest, rape, sadness, grief, and anger, providing both acknowledgment of these experiences and a safe space to explore their sexuality. He views his work as his calling and his gift, and he positions himself as a catalyst to a collective sexual awakening.
Carmen began working as an escort addicted to alcohol, and she credits her recovery to the extraordinary relationships she developed with other women in the industry. She found herself among a group of women who were so open to sharing their experiences and struggles that she was able to tackle her own problems head-on. Her self-esteem issues diminished as her clients allowed her to recognize her inner and outer beauty.
Freya Metz, a 46-year-old tantric practitioner, began working in the field in her 40s. She said that she had to wait until that time before she fully internalized the fact that she was beautiful. Though she had been told this many times in her life, she remained unconvinced, surrounded by media images that did not reflect her likeness.
As a tantric practitioner, she came to realize that she was not only attractive and desired but truly beautiful. She was able to see our society’s fixation on youth, thinness, and unattainable proportions as not only artificial but quite unnecessary. She said the greatest skill she has acquired through her work is the ability to both recognize and communicate her boundaries. This is a skill vital to both sex work and “straight” life, and she hopes to convey these skills to some of the women most in need: trafficked women. Freya now divides her time between Canada and Cambodia, where she has spearheaded a healing centre for female survivors of sex trafficking, the Banteay Srey Project. Her work highlights the vast difference between consensual sex work and the tragedy of trafficked women.
Sean entered the sex industry seven years ago as a tantric masseur, providing a service he jokingly refers to as “heartfelt hand jobs”. He has deepened his practice through mentoring others in the industry, educating the public, and exploring the intersection of sexuality and healing. He helps others in the industry to work in ways which are empowering for themselves and their clients by providing them with the tools needed to explore and define their boundaries and become clear on the necessity of both giving and receiving consent.
A deep understanding of personal boundaries and the primacy of consent are personal skills he sees as essential to anyone, in any profession. Sean sees healing potential in sex work whenever there is a confluence of the desires of client and sex worker. He describes the essence of his healing practice as “the creation of a supportive and fun space where his clients can consciously explore their own erotic desires through touch”.
Each of the women at the gathering expressed how her self-confidence had improved as a result of her work.
Minna Mah, an exotic dancer, was finally able to cast off the weight of her mother’s declaration that she was unattractive when she had the opportunity to be praised and celebrated for her appearance. Tending toward shyness, she gained courage by interacting with others and learned how to communicate both verbally and nonverbally. She began to share her stories with other women and at last learned that she was not alone. In an environment that is often portrayed as one in which men prey upon women, Minna met her husband, the love of her life.
Phaedra McEachren has worked in various facets of the sex industry: as a professional dominant (or pro domme) and both in front of and behind the camera. It was especially her work behind the camera on porn shoots that made her aware that reality is not nearly as perfect and pretty as it looks in the final edited version.
I have learned that intimacy and connection draw from a much deeper source than surface beauty. I am comfortable with the developing lines on my face, the changes in my body as I age, because I know that to be attractive and attracted requires nothing more than being present and honest. Stripping for half of my life, yet never opting for cosmetic surgeries, I learned that a genuine smile is much more attractive than a pair of augmented breasts or collagen-injected lips. I have seen women earn more and more money in the strip bar as they age, in large part because they become more comfortable in their bodies, more clear on who they are and what they really have to offer.
Humans have an innate desire to make a difference in the world, and each of the amazing people I spoke with felt so privileged to see the change their services provided in another’s life.
Volpina Vance, an escort for more than a year, sees her work as therapy. Her clients come to see her for sexual services, but she said they are in such an open and vulnerable state. “It’s like the clouds break and everything is on the table.” She said she often finds herself in a place of deep emotional connection and is very moved by what she is able to give.
Lux has worked in the sex industry for numerous years and has chosen to work as an escort for the past year. She went into the work with a very open and curious mind and has found it both enjoyable and personally rewarding. She has learned that she is able to connect with and have fulfilling experiences with very diverse types of men.
She said she has also learned that there are many lonely individuals in our society, and she finds it “amazing” to be able to give to them. But she has also suffered the loss of family and friends in choosing to be honest about her line of work.
I think it is worth drawing a parallel between two groups of stigmatized individuals: homosexuals and sex workers. Until very recently, being queer was seen as unhealthy, just as sex work is seen to be today. Yet much of society (at least here in liberal Vancouver) now recognizes that what has been so unhealthy about being gay is the stigma placed upon one’s lifestyle, the constant need for hiding, even subverting one’s innate desires. When homosexual individuals are recognized as normal, legitimate, and productive members of society, they are no longer subject to the forces that led them to unhealthy states.
The same case can be made for sex workers. What is unhealthy about sex work is that in many cases it is criminalized, forcing it into rough streets and dark alleys. It is unhealthy when social structures are not present to allow one’s exit from survival sex work. It is harmful when one suffers disownment, the loss of family and friends due to one’s choices.
But the actual, physical work of escorts and strippers, tantric practitioners and pro dommes is not innately unhealthy. As I have at last allowed myself to see, it can be both enriching and illuminating, therapeutic and rewarding.
My name is Wrenna Robertson. I am a happy and healthy woman. I love and am loved. I’m a valuable, productive member of society.
I am proud to say that I am a sex worker.
http://www.straight.com/article-626751/vancouver/i-am-proud-say-i-am-sex-worker
escorts are for women too 