Kevicha Echols
She works hard for the money so you better treat her right.
—Donna Summer
Waitresses, nurses, mechanics, models, athletes, and entertainers all have jobs that involve both physical labor and close relationships. After a hard day of work they expect to come home to people who love and support them. Sex workers want this too, but their reality is more complex. The exchange of sexual services for material or monetary compensation supposedly absent of any romantic feelings, emotion, or attachment is unimaginable for many outside of the sex industry. Yet some women and men support their families, friends, spouses, and partners on the economic opportunities that sex work provides—and they maintain these personal relationships as well.
For the single sex worker, finding love in the wake of paid encounters with clients can be a difficult and emotional process. In his personal essay “I (Heart) Affection and Other Forms of Emotional Masochism,” Hawk Kinkaid takes us through the very heart of this matter, reflecting on the desire to have a “love connection” while learning to manage the boundaries between erotic labor, casual sex encounters, and personal sexual relationships. On the flip side, working in the sex industry opens the possibility of confrontation with the partners of clients, as Jenni Russell expresses in her poem “Wives.” On a lighter note, Eliyanna Kaiser takes us to the animal kingdom where we learn about penguins and their trade in sex favors for shiny rocks. Families, too, struggle with the stigmas and challenges of sex work and its impact on both parents and their children. One of the questions that critics of the sex industry often ask of parents, as a kind of litmus test of moral outrage, is “Would you want your daughter doing this?” Mother and former stripper Katharine Frank examines this topic in her essay, “Keeping Her Off the Pole: My Daughter’s Right to Choose.” Syd V. provides insight on how a child of a sex worker came to understand a parent’s job, learned to be supportive, and became involved in sex worker issues in her essay, “Hell’s Kitchen: Growing Up Loving a Working Mother.”
The decision to disclose work in the sex industry to loved ones can be a struggle. Fear of stigma or rejection may influence some sex workers’ decisions to reveal or not to reveal their jobs. Similarly, the concern of how friends and family members might react or what they would think if they knew that their brother, sister, mother, father, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, or third cousin twice removed dated or married a sex worker crosses the minds of some who find themselves in these partnerships. Contrary to the belief of many, some sex workers who do make their work known have supportive families and friends, and so do their partners.
Communication is key in any positive and productive relationship, and honesty is a large component of this. Family, partners, and friends are our safe haven, and sometimes it takes just one person to help us feel accepted and respected.
KEVICHA ECHOLS, PhD, served as the outreach director for $pread from 2006 to 2008. Kevicha’s work at $pread inspired her research investigating discourses in publications created by and for the sex work community since the 1980s. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is a professor at a local college.