Questions about safe sex I think are a normal and acceptable part of sex work.
I think it unsurprising that clients might have questions about the risk level of activities that might take place. For two reasons - firstly, I think safe sex discussions are and should be normalised as part of chat when you are going to get intimate with a person, but layered onto that, people are also approaching the encounter with all of the rhetoric society has thrown at them about sex work on their mind - there is often an assumption that sex workers are ‘unclean’. So questions seem natural to me, however it’s important to learn the difference between reasonable discussion and stigmatising or offending the sex worker in question. This isn’t actually, at the gist of it, a blog about safe sex, I think that topic has been well and truly covered, but there are some tangential issues around the discussion that are worthy of putting a spotlight on.
Recently I had two uncomfortable encounters in the enquiry stage that made me think it worthy dedicating a blog to it. As a sex worker, I consider it my job, to manage risk - I largely do this for myself, as I care for my health and my business. I am my sole means of income - if I am unwell, the business is not operating. I am also polyamorous and partnered and have other people to consider. So for those simple reasons, I manage risks as best I can. This means that condoms are used in the bedroom and I get regular testing. But for the most part, I don’t overthink it - it is all very automatic for me now and I don’t dedicate a lot of time to thinking about STIs unless it’s in an educational sense. I don’t know if it’s good luck or good management, I presume both, but in my long career I’ve never had a positive result, however I acknowledge that every time I go to bed, a risk is there and so I keep myself responsible in the present moment so I don’t have to fret about that later.
Now I am pretty experienced, and so I think with years of practising good management and having a pragmatic and scientific understanding of these things, that anxiety isn’t there much for me any more - I know if something is to happen, the sky will not fall, for the vast majority of illnesses, medicine will help and while uncomfortable, life will go on. However, it’s true that for some inexperienced folk, the thought of catching an STI is so terrifying, it can make them not want to be intimate at all. Lest of all with a sex worker, who they calculate as taking risks all the time. I think it’s important for people in this situation to consider, that a person who works a ‘risky’ job gets very good at managing that risk very quickly. I am much more capable of managing a safe sex encounter than a person who might be inexperienced or not as well informed - I have all the incentive in the world to make sure this goes well for both of us. I consider it both of our jobs to keep an encounter safe - you must also be self responsible, and consent to particular activities is for you to give - you can say no, slow down - you are driving the train in a paid encounter. With inexperienced folk I do take my time to explain what I’m doing and why, so you’re more informed in the future and can have safe sex in other encounters more confidently.
If I assure you of my ability to risk manage and explain that safe sex will be practised etc, and that does not abate nerves, the picture starts to look different. There is so much information out there about STIs that it can be daunting and intimidating. I think being armed with information can really help some people with their anxiety, where to others it can create overwhelm and fear and it’s possible for this to move into very real medical anxiety. Rational concerns are really healthy, however if fears, even with best efforts to discuss prevention etc, linger and become something that prevents you from trying intimacy at all, there is nothing I can do or say at that point to remedy that, it is now beyond a risk management problem and now it’s psychological.
I am not shaming anyone who experiences this level of anxiety, in fact I do really understand it. When I was young I had tokophobia, a word I didn’t know at the time, but it means a deeply held fear of getting or being pregnant. I remember being a young person who would take a pregnancy test after every intimate experience, no matter how safe it was. They weren’t cheap either, I was spending hours of my pay when I was in relationships double and triple checking that there hadn’t been an ‘accident’ because we are so often told ‘condoms aren’t 100%’. I had also had it well and truly drilled into me as a ‘gifted’ student that a teen pregnancy would ‘ruin’ me and my life. I was told repeatedly that a pregnancy would have me kicked out of home. A pregnancy was, as a woman, apparently - the worst thing that could ever happen to me, and though I loved the experience of sex, I was constantly overthinking afterwards, fraught with so much guilt and anxiety that it kept me up at night.
We actually had a pretty good sex education program at my school and I’m thankful for that, but there was enough other messaging happening at home and by teachers to put the fear of God into me, It wasn’t ‘hey, here’s how to control your reproductive destiny’ it was ‘don’t you dare get pregnant or your life is over’ - which is a horribly oppressive thing to put on a young person. And STI messaging isn’t that different. STI’s are the boogie man of sex, particularly for cis-men where pregnancy might be less of an immediate concern (I mean it takes two people to tango but that’s a different conversation). The AIDS epidemic was before my time and a lot of people’s time who came to see me, and while it is really important for safe sex messaging to exist and a lot came out of that, that ‘fear of God’ does an awful lot of harm to people’s relationship with intimacy. The messaging, left from an era of very real fear of fatality, is that sex can kill you. It is absolutely no wonder that people have deep seated anxiety associated with sex, many of us have been conditioned to view it as akin to base jumping or dumpster diving rather than a really lovely part of normal life.
So, I get it. I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s fears around STI’s and I could spend all day trying to alleviate those fears from a practical safe sex standpoint, but really what’s actually going to help you if you’re experiencing a deep fear which is holding back your sex life, is to firstly recognise that as very real anxiety (and anxiety is not bad or unusual), and understand that that needs to be approached differently, and separately. If you harass a sex worker for continued assurances or promises, you won’t find them because you’re not addressing the root cause, and you will come off as stigmatising the worker and not be met with much positivity. Sex workers are not unclean - we are informed, smart, and savvy, but most of us are not psychologists, nor are we responsible for you.
There is some homework to be done, for a lot of people, to recondition themselves around intimacy, and there are professionals who do just that and as someone who has received this kind of therapy I just really, really rate it. This recommendation stands also with people who have anxiety around intimacy for other reasons - that might be trauma, it might be ‘religious guilt’, it could be any number of reasons. And you’re not weird, society has done an absolute number on all of us with confusing, even traumatic messaging around intimacy. My job starts when you’re in the room, I hold your hand and we find a safe space at your pace to explore that and make it a really positive, affirming experience for you, so you can be open to intimacy and all those lovely pleasures and feelings into the future. But the work leading up to that, to get you in the room, needs to come from you. It comes from recognising the anxiety and addressing it, whether that be with a psychologist, from sitting with and recognising your feelings, educating yourself further so you can be better prepared, or even talking to friends or safe people about their experiences too. The first step in reclaiming ownership of your relationship with intimacy starts now - with you.
PETRA FOX
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