[This is Chapter 1.1 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: The Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link.]
It could have been a porn movie.
With heavy metal blazing, a topless woman with bleached-blonde hair tackles her male sex partner in a fit of passion, rips his shirt off, and makes out furiously with him. She then jumps off him, rips his pants off, and jumps right back on top of him. She slides her head down his chest towards his crotch, as her clutched fingers scratch violently down his chest in tow and her head bobs.
He leaps off the bed, pulls her up while she straddles him, and then slams her back down on the bed, now on top of her still furiously making out. He rips her panties off and starts thrusting her from on top, as he shoves his tongue into her cleavage. She lets out staccato orgasmic huffs and screams at each of his aggressive thrusts. Her head hangs back off the edge of the bed, upside down, and she pushes up on the carpet so as not to fall off the bed from his vigorous thrusting.
She writhes in ecstasy and screams in pleasure even more as he chokes her gruffly. Now he’s leaning off the bed too on top of her, gymnastically propping himself up with one arm, so they don’t fall off together as he continues to thrust her energetically. Now they fall off the bed and roll over onto each other, as they catch their breath in post-orgasmic gasps of air.
It could have been any porn film, but it was not porn. It was a rated-R movie, Normal Life (1996), featuring Luke Perry and Ashley Judd.
I hold no judgment whatsoever for people making money by participating in nude sex scenes in films—mainstream or otherwise. More power to them!
But I do hold judgment against Hollywood actresses who make money participating in such sex scenes in mainstream films, and who then go on to judge and insult other women who do the same in porn or 1-on-1 for paying clients. And I really hold judgment against Hollywood actresses who make money participating in such sex scenes, and then try to shut down the employment and rid the world of these sex workers: adults who create sexual experiences for clients and audiences, for money. ((A more common definition of a sex worker is “a person who provides sexual services for money.” This definition is of course valid, but I coined the slightly different definition above, which uses the term “create” instead of “provide” and “experiences” instead of “services” for two reasons.
First, the word “create” emphasizes the creative aspect of most sex work. Anyone who knows sex workers—from dancers to porn performers to cam performers to professional Dominants to escorts—knows how creative they are: in their marketing, their fashion and costumes, the fantasies they create, the sexual skills they cultivate, and the various ways they innovate to help their clients and audience members explore creative aspects of their own sexuality.
Second, while providing an “experience” still falls under the general category of service labor, I think it more faithfully describes the central dynamic of sex work. Take an analogy: if someone pays for the service labor of an auto mechanic, they are not paying for an experience, they’re paying just for a result. Whereas, if someone pays for the service labor of say, an adventure tour guide, they are very much paying for the provider to create a specific experience for them. Puns about “servicing parts” aside, I think most sex workers are closer to adventure tour guides than to auto mechanics. In fact, I think an accurate way to describe most sex workers would be “tour guides to your own body and sexuality.” ))
In recent years, Ashley Judd has fashioned herself as the principal American celebrity spokesperson in an international movement to put sex workers out of their jobs, via arresting their clients. This model, focusing on arresting the clients more than the workers, is known as the “Nordic Model” or “Swedish Model,” as it originated in Sweden; in America it is known as “End Demand” as it attempts to end the demand for paid sexual experiences via arresting clients.
Other famous actresses who have advocated for the Nordic Model include Kate Winslet, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Emma Thompson, Lena Dunham, Anne Hathaway, Lisa Kudrow and Claire Danes.
And, as we shall see later in this chapter, every one of these actresses has exhibited the same hypocrisy as Ashley Judd: profiting from their own sexuality in nude sex scenes in R-rated movies, but then advocating for the Nordic Model, to prevent other women less famous or privileged than they from profiting from their own sexuality.
Not surprisingly, currently-working sex workers near-unanimously oppose the Nordic Model just as hairdressers, car mechanics, accountants, psychotherapists, lawyers, or tour guides would oppose policies that attempted to put them out of work by arresting their clients.
The Nordic Model is gaining force around the world because it is the convergent policy stance on sex work of two otherwise totally opposed groups, who have come together in one of the most notable instances “strange bedfellows” in history: the Christian right, and large swaths of the feminist movement. On nearly every other issue—abortion, LGBT+ rights, and contraception—they are sworn enemies. But—for reasons we shall examine in this book—on this issue, they have decided to set aside their differences and come together to put sex workers out of work.
I call this coalition the “anti-sex-worker coalition” (or the “ASW coalition” for short).
This label may seem unfair; not one member of the coalition thus described would accept this term for themselves. They view all women in the sex industry as victims, and they would say they are advocating for, helping, even “rescuing” these victims; thus, they would say they are “pro,” not “anti,” women in the sex industry.
However, as I will make plain in this book, “anti-sex-worker” is an entirely fair, reasonable, and accurate description of their stance.
Take Ashley Judd, as just one example of hundreds I could point to. Before I say more, I want to make clear that I do regard Ashley Judd as a hero for her undeniably courageous role of leadership in the #MeToo movement, which I consider the most impactful and important social movement I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Judd was one of the first sources to name herself as a victim of Harvey Weinstein, on the record. The famous October 5, 2017 New York Times article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, which broke the Weinstein story, opens with Judd’s harrowing experience of Weinstein’s now-familiar pattern: inviting the young starlet for a business meeting in a hotel, switching the meeting at the last minute to his hotel room, and then cornering her with demands for nude massages and nude showers.
For her pivotal and courageous role as one of the first named sources against Weinstein, in the sequence of events that lead to the public snowballing of the #MeToo movement–started by survivor and activist Tarana Burke in 2006–and for her relentless #MeToo advocacy since, Judd has been a crucial leader in the #MeToo movement; I admire her greatly for her leadership in this capacity.
But no leader is perfect, and unfortunately, when it comes to her advocacy on sex work policy, I think that Judd and the other Hollywood actresses advocating for the Nordic Model are betraying their own ideals of the #MeToo movement. These ideals include allowing women to define their own experiences, believing women when they express their own sexual boundaries and when they have or have not consented to sexual activity, and working tirelessly for safer working conditions for women.
As we will see in detail in this book, the Nordic Model—and the accompanying stigma, stereotypes, silencing and erasure of sex workers’ own shared experiences, and de-facto criminalization it heaps on sex workers—goes squarely against all of these ideals. This makes Judd and her colleagues in Nordic Model advocacy, unfortunately, fairly described as anti-sex-worker advocates.
Why is such a harsh term in fact perfectly fair?
Next: Chapter 1.2 The Anti-Sex Worker Coalition >>
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