Sex workers are sex educators, and we should be thanking them for it

Recently, when I interviewed stand-up comic and Los Angeles-based escort Aviva Ruse, she told me that the trait that made her a bad waitress is the same one that makes her a good escort: “As a waitress, I thought it was my job to tell people how to behave in restaurants,” she says. “And as an escort, it’s my job to tell people how to behave in me.”

While her directness in the restaurant industry was frowned upon, in sex work, it is entirely appropriate (arguably, necessary). “It’s all about alignment,” she quipped.

Ruse is a comedian and the statement was obviously intended to be a joke. Still, like all good jokes, it points to an important truth: in the absence of comprehensive and accessible sex education, sex workers become de facto sex educators. It’s a job that most of us did not sign up for, but that we are handed nonetheless.

At the beginning of my sex work career, I remember spending hundreds of hours on phone sex lines — not dirty talking, but walking sexually inexperienced people through STI scares and testing protocols, relationship woes, sexual shame, and answering questions about sexual positions, fetishes, non-normative relationship structures, and so much more.

I thought about both Aviva’s joke and my early phone sex days this past week when I had a young and sexually inexperienced client reach out and ask if we could spend an hour together, but then express concern that he wouldn’t be able to “last” the entire hour. He was under the impression — for reasons that I’m sure most of us can imagine — that the totality of an erotic encounter is one thing, and that this thing should last for an hour or more. Importantly, if it doesn’t, he’s doing it wrong.

In 2009, the advertising maven Cindy Gallop made waves on the Ted Talk stage when she admitted that she is an older woman who likes to date and have sex with men in their 20s. “When I date younger men, I have sex with younger men,” she says. “And when I have sex with younger men, I encounter very directly and personally the ramifications of hardcore pornography in our culture.”

Taken out of context, it would be easy to hear this statement as anti-pornography and/or anti-sex work (Is she saying the porn stars are steering young men astray?). Yet her argument is more nuanced; she points out that in a Puritanical culture such as that in the U.S., where churches, schools, and elders are all afraid to talk to young people about sex, “It is not surprising that hardcore pornography has become sex education.” (In a previous column I argued that this is one of several great reasons to talk to your teens about sex.)

Though not a sex worker herself, in her relationship with younger men, Gallop says, “I have no problem realizing that a certain amount of reeducation, rehabilitation, and reorientation has to take place.” Like Ruse, she has come to see it as her job to teach people how to, in Ruse’s words, “behave in [her].” In my case, it seemed important to tell my potential client that “lasting” an hour isn’t an expectation of mine — that it’s neither reasonable nor desirable.

I am certainly not picking on this one client for holding unrealistic expectations about what real-life sexuality looks like. He is just the most recent to voice an often often-felt concern, especially for young and inexperienced men who have come to think of sexuality in terms of performance and stamina, instead of connection and eroticism. Indeed, it is relatively common to hear men say that they are disappointed in themselves for perceived shortcomings in their performance, as if erotic encounters were akin to sporting events.

When clients express these feelings or ask for performance and technique reviews, I am often reminded of how differently we think about our encounters, and how this competitive framework misses the best part of sexuality: the pleasure, connection, and moments of shared humanity.

Gallop is right, our refusal as a culture to talk about sexual pleasure and connection often has the effect of foreclosing its possibility. Certainly, reeducation, rehabilitation, and reorientation are necessary. Ruse’s joke is not a joke, and the world is better off with her (and others who are willing to do this work) in it.

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