I agree with you that “a whore is a whore is a whore”, but it’s one thing to say that and quite another to practice it personally. I have nothing against women who advertise on Backpage – two of my best friends fall in that category – but the prospect of doing it myself results in a special kind of revulsion. How would you propose that a whore more accustomed to the “high class call girl” route get over that kind of internalized whorephobia? It’s not morality, and it’s not even logic; my mentor has suggested that my earnings would improve considerably if I’d get off my damn high horse, work in the big cities at the market rate taking callers on short notice, and quit waiting on men to book long sessions well in advance. I just can’t stomach the idea of myself as “that kind” of whore, even though I was once previously successful working like that and could use the money.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. None of us can help what squicks us out, and sometimes the squick factor is stronger than the desire for money. There’s also the simple fact that we’re all good at different things; “high-end” GFE is so natural and easy for me I can practically do it in my sleep, but domination takes effort and PSE is so hard it’s practically impossible. But I have friends for whom the order of difficulty is different, and some tell me GFE is so difficult for them they prefer to avoid it entirely. I don’t think preferring to stick to what one is good at and avoiding what’s difficult or revolting is necessarily a sign of whorephobia; it could just be that you prefer to take a little pay cut to make your life easier (a sin against commerce of which I, too, am guilty). If it doesn’t bother you that your friends do mid-range touring, and you don’t look back on your own past with disgust, and you don’t treat other sex workers any differently or talk down to them, your problem may not be whorephobia but rather the kind of genteel indolence which causes many of us to pick sex work over our other options in the first place. If a woman prefers to do sex work because it gives her a higher return for less effort than “straight” jobs, it’s certainly no surprise if she chooses to do a form of sex work she personally finds easier and more palatable over one she finds less so.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
