The Sydney Morning Herald’s Daily Life column has an article about sex work today.  You can see it here.

http://www.dailylife.com.au/health-and-fitness/debunking-the-myths-of-sex-work-20130429-2iodn.html

I think that the article is a reasonalbe and sensible wrap up of sex work.  In summary “sex workers are people too, so why not be nice to them”.  Ok, that might be a little glib, but you take my point I hope.

For the first time every I have managed to get a comment published.  I was prompted to firstly by the question raised in the article of whether male sex workers (like myself) and their clients have a different experience of the industry and the general “shaming” that goes on against sex workers.

What has delighted me constantly over the years that I have worked as an escort is the huge amount of support that I have had from both clients and from the few people in my life who I have told about what I do.

So here’s my point, amplified by the many mindless comments on the artile linked above that dismiss prostitution out of hand: being able to come to someone like me for companionship, intimacy, and sex is a vital option for both men and women to have in our society.  Why?  Because all too often the nature of our society doesn’t provide those things for people.  Perhaps they have been in an abusive relationship (emotionally, or physically) and need someone they can absolutely trust to help them repair their self-esteem, or accept intimacy again, or have a disability that prevents them from forming a conventional relationship in the first place.  Or perhaps they just want and need physical company right now, but don’t have a socially acceptable relationship to provide it.

The reasons are many and varied, but you can be absolutely sure that when people start making blanket statements about prostitution being bad/demeaning/imoral etc that the person has never worked in the industry, and probably never actually needed the services themselves (“need” being distinct here from just having indulged).

This isn’t to say that a person has to have a specific need to use my services.  But it begs the question of why can’t we treat sex as something fun to do?  People in relationships have sex for fun all the time, so why shouldn’t someone who isn’t in a relationship choose to buy sex for fun?

At the end of the day I like seeing discussion of sexuality in the media.  It may attract the trolls and nutters to denounce it as evil, but every article raises questions and gets people thinking and talking about the issues.  Which has to be a good thing.

John.