in some ways, my response is: yup, yup, yup.
on the other hand, it's a little unfair. Lewis writes about how, as a kid, she used to play "whore" with her friends. They strike "whore" poses and the other girls would pretend to be johns. She has a strong attraction for the work, something about it luring her. She doesn't dig around too much in her psyche as to why, though later she digs around in her psyche to understand why she feels compelled to keep going deeper and deeper into sex work that become progressively more about actual human touch: from the "tanning salon" where she dances but no touching, to the glass cubes where men jack off to women inside, to jack shacks, to stripping, to lap dances in the VIP rooms.
I've been reading Lewis's blog for awhile, so I'm obviously biased about her. She's a superb writer. But I think she provides that much needed perspective: not every sex worker is up there enjoying every minute of what she is doing.
But as I asked long ago at the old blog, why the HELL is it that we (I mean the sexpos feminists) feel compelled -- or at least some do -- to insist that, when Nina Hartley is performing, she's really really having a great time. No one gives a flying fuck about whether Angelina Jolie is having the time of her life getting it on with her leading man. As Melissa Gira said at the time, it's that incessant need we have to know "the truth" of sex -- not a natural need, but the instrument-effect of the confessional that is post/modernity.
It's also not that Lewis doesn't like men (Sex and Bacon makes that clear), it's that she doesn't like her customers. But she's not living up the glamorous life of the call girl, either.
And she tells the truth about something anyone who's ever been a waitress knows: when the relaters are there, trying to "relate" to you, just as the customers in a restaurant are there trying to 'relate" to you, it's invariably about getting better service out of you, about proving what a good john/customer you are, or just about trying to make it about something other than what it is. oh, and the other reason: because it's a way of getting at the private you, to get something for nothing. I'm not saying every transaction is like that, and this is also only really very obvious in the kind of joint I worked at: an upscale place that catered to business clientele. Corporate hotshots out whining and dining potential clients.
Anyway, from Lewis's blog, which pretty much sums up why, after reading her a few years ago, I just had to read her book. Took me long enough:
<quote> What the world doesn't need is another perky "I stripped my way through college!" narrative.
And it sure as hell doesn't need one more self-aggrandizing, pseudo-transgressive "How I learned all about my fascinating self by working at the Lusty Lady," with the obligatory softcore lesbian experimentation scene, plus myriad loving descriptions of how physically attractive the narrator is, interspersed with the most amateurish Women's Studies 101 crap imaginable about how working as a stripper helped the narrator to really take charge of her sexuality and learn how to work it, grrrrl, as if by objectifying ourselves, we can take control of how others objectify us.
I call fucking bullshit on that: because at the end of the day, women are still getting objectified, whether we're participating in or even encouraging our objectification, or not. You may choose to rub your crotch all over some slimy stripper pole, and bend over to pick up cum-stained one dollar bills nobody's making you do it, grrrrrlfriend -but you're still spreading your ass cheeks for money, honey, and what's so fucking cool about that?
You know what? At this point it's not transgressive to put on six-inch heels and titty-dance for a year or so, while you're trying to figure out if you want to go to grad school or not. And I have yet to see all these breathless college girls who write their stupid little stripper memoirs to actually really examine their positions of total privilege-the fact that yes, they can prance around in a g-string for a year or two, because they still have health insurance through their university health care center, and because they know damn well they can get a real jobor go back to school or do whatever the fuck they like, because they're skinny little white girls slumming preciously, on their sweet little voyages of self-discovery. It's just like a college girl to put on blackface and play Negro for a year but that doesn't make her Rosa Parks.
I guess what I want to say is this: it's one thing to flirt with the sex industry, because it reinforces your idea of yourself as desirable, and because it makes you feel like a bad girl for about a minute, in between financial aid merit scholarships.
It's another thing to suck some smelly stranger's dick because you're hungry, and you need the money to buy groceries. Now that's transgressive, grrrrl! How come I don't ever hear about you college grads taking a year off to do that? What's the matter, buttercup is that too real for you? It's fun to dress up like a whore, but it's no fun to actually be one?
I've done my time in the sleazy little joints, the peepshows, the borderline-legal and completely illegal establishments. I've posed for pictures that have ended up all over the Internet. I've done videos for piece-of-shit LA pornographers, who paid me fifty extra dollars to stick a toy in my ass. I've wiped yeasty vaginal snail-trails off of filthy stage floors, so I could do my stage set without slipping on some other girl's cunt-snot. I've done whatever it took to keep me fed, and housed, and at least somewhat autonomous.
But you know what? I've never worked at the Lusty Lady. I auditioned for them, but they informed me that I was too chubby for them. They also didn't like my tattoos. They said they only hired "upscale, classy, college girl-types."
Their message was loud and clear: I wasn't Lusty Lady material.
So I took my act elsewhere, and I did it for over ten years, and I never once thought I was anything different or better than any of the women I worked with. I'm no college girl, and I'm no fancy Vegas-style "dancer," taking a high-concept, pre-packaged tour across the United States before settling down to financial security and marriage.
I have snorkeled through shit for money, and what I've learned is this: it's not trangressive to work in the sex industry. It's not sexy, nor is it somehow "empowering," unless you're a grievously damaged bitch who got fucked by her daddy at age five, and who now has to re-enact that same power imbalance over and over again with customers in order to re-cast her victimization as control.
It's just a job, and yet it's more than that: if you work as a waitress and then write a book or become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, nobody refers to you as an "ex-waitress." But spread your legs for money, or touch someone's peeny for cash, and for the rest of your life you're a "former prostitute." It's like you're changed forever by what you've done, in the eyes of society. Like you're tattooed with a big fat scarlet A on your chest, for all to see, no matter how virtuous you may be.
Sex work does change you forever, though. They're right.
The thing is, there's a million striations between stage dancing in an upscale gentlemen's club, or at a "woman-owned, woman-managed" collective. There are peep shows where they won't let you leave your plastic box for twelve hours, except to go to the bathroom. There are strip clubs where you're expected to let the customers suck on your tits for $30. There are places where you're given piss-stained blankets, to protect you from the even more piss-stained floors, and where you have to sneak your tips through a crack in the plastic window so the management won't take them from you. There are venues that are like county jail holding cells, where women are just pussies in veal pens, waiting and waiting and waiting to be picked, so they can make enough money to buy a meal.
There are also places that are safe havens, where women take care of each other. Where you sit with friends, and tell stories about the customers to blow off anger and fear. Where you can be as tattooed and chubby and non-"upscale" as you want, because you're allowed to make money with your own ingenuity and charisma.
Both of these places the sweatshops, and the shelters are where I've met women so brilliant, so fierce, and so unrelentingly moral, that I will carry them with me in my heart forever.
I guess this is what they mean when they call us "former prostitutes," or "ex-strippers," or whatever it is they say, to make sure everyone knows we've taken money to show our bodies or perform sexual acts. They know we have become different. I just don't think they know how we've changed, or what we've changed into. </quote>