I Heart Sex Workers (2012)
Written by Lia Claire Scholl and published by Chalise Press, I Heart Sex Workers is positioned as “a Christian response to people in the sex trade.” As such, I, a Christian sex worker, posted about it on my blog IN CAPITAL LETTERS TO SHOW MY EXCITEMENT SAYING “I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE I HAVE THE MIGHTEST OF NEEDS!” It’s a saying you’ll often see on the blogosphere, though for me it’s not just a meme; the degree of social isolation I feel from my Church and my cognitive dissonance between these two aspects of myself mean that I do sorely need someone somewhere to reach out their hand and welcome me as a Christian and a sex worker into Christian life.
This book is not that hand. Rather than being a direct response to people in the sex industry, this book is more of a 101 for people outside of the industry on what it is we (whores, strippers, camgirls, dommes, etc) do and why we do it. The book begins with the story of Tamar from the Old Testament, who pretended to be a hooker to force her family to honor their obligations, in an aptly titled chapter called “Playing the Harlot.” Each of the book’s four sections opens with a similar biblical story, telling it from a first-person perspective and illustrating how each example would be viewed today as a form of sex work. Personally, these are my favorite parts, so much so that I want “Tzadkah mimeni”—the Hebrew phrase “more righteous than I” that Tamar’s father says when he finds out what she’s done—tattooed somewhere. Reading these retellings, I can’t help but think Scholl is trying to prompt Christians to see sex work in a new light, perhaps even as people making a legitimate choice in their lives. Unfortunately, Scholl stops short of actually saying these words. She does offer some choice ones though, such as the exhortation that “we need to grow up about sex,”something I wish people in general, not just Christians, would hear.
I actually found reading this book painful—I could feel the tension in Scholl’s writing; she’s treading the impossible line of not condoning sex work, lest she alienate her audience, and not condemning it either or painting us as helpless victims as this, as she writes herself, is one of the major failings of non peer-based organizations, the savior complex. Still, the overarching feeling I get is that she is trying to justify sex work to people whose value systems find us reproachable. Discussions of agency, of privilege, of “the cycle of sex work” (as opposed to the cycle of retail or factory work?) all seem … well, patronizing. This book is not for me, and while I appreciate the incredibly delicate position Scholl is in and think this book is a huge step in the right direction, it’s not a direct challenge to religious arguments against sex work, which is what we really need. It’s also not an invitation for sex workers to shed the internalized shame we’ve grown up in and reach out to organized religion.
The main goal of this book as far as I can tell is to make Christians—in particular, those in positions of authority in Christian churches—more understanding of sex workers; that understanding being that we are people operating under our own perception of agency in difficult situations that lead us to sex work. While Scholl does parrot the sex positivity party line, repeatedly pointing out that we often do this work because we enjoy it and it allows us sexual freedom, the overall message of the book is one of “love the sinner, not the sin.” While I appreciate the huge step she’s taking in standing up for us at all, I can’t help but feel dissatisfied with the representation of sex workers in this book. Our experiences are as diverse as we are and I’m sure Scholl, as a board chair at the Red Umbrella Project, is very aware of that. However, the fact that I couldn’t relate to anything she said about sex workers, to myself or anyone I know, is problematic. I don’t feel that I fit the downtrodden narrative that comes up a little too often here, nor do I feel there is a particularly strong relationship between my sexuality and my job. Conversations about sex work and sexuality comes up a lot between my friends and I, and I’ve not heard anyone say that our jobs gave us an outlet for our divergent sexuality; it’s more like we adapt to our clients’ sexuality and work around it. This is a conversation outside of the scope of the book, but as the sexuality of service providers was discussed, it feels like an oversimplification not to expand on it.
In addition, there is a very strange chapter where Scholl states (correctly) that the reasons why clients visit sex workers are as unique as each individual but then goes on to list certain “types” of clients: the clichéd lonely hearts client, the power hungry client who thinks he is purchasing a person rather than a service, the “manipulator,” and so on. Reading this chapter in particular, I continuously had the experience of being incredibly dubious about what was being said, then having my faith restored by the following explanation, only to run up against something problematic again. For example,
“The men who visit sex workers are no different from you and me.” Okay, normalizing clients, good start. She continues, “we all have hurt, angry, and wounded feelings.” Ummm . . ? “We all seek to fill empty spaces in our lives with different things. Some people fill them with lovers, friends or family. Some people fill them with obsessions, sports, shopping, food, drugs or alcohol. Some fill them by visiting sex workers. Others fill them with becoming sex workers.”
Christian sex workers: not an oxymoron, and not just for hot nun cosplay blasphemy (Photo via Pinterest)
Statements like this keep coming up again and again, perplexing me. While I don’t personally spend a great deal of time ruminating on why my clients like to see me (beyond how this applies to my advertising, anyway), I find the implication that sex workers have “hurt, angry, and wounded feelings” and are trying to “fill the empty spaces in our lives” with sex work downright offensive. In the context of the rest of the book, which seems to focus so much on the economic factors that affect sex workers, this statement stands out as glaringly incongruent. Scholl is right, I am trying to fill a void. That void is in my wallet.
There are hypothetical scenarios painted of women getting into sex work, using alcohol and pot to “help [them] stay awake overnight on the street” (laughing out loud here, weed and booze are not stimulants), which then leads them to hard drugs, criminal records, time spent away from their children, etc. While Scholl makes the point many, many times that we must understand that the sex industry is nuanced, the overall tone of the book and the vignettes she offers—aside from the biblical ones—continue to depict sex workers as victims and sex work as something inherently bad. When she points out that sex work allows some sex workers to be accepted by a community of other workers, especially in activist circles, or to fulfill sexual fantasies they may not be able to enact in everyday life, and that many of us enjoy what we do (because we either love it or hate it? Are those the only options?), it comes across as more of an afterthought, or even just as placating her potential sex worker readers. I neither enjoy my work sexually nor am I a creature of the night. I work for the money. While I appreciate her explanation of the economic factors that lead one to sex work, I am no more a victim of my circumstances than any other kind of worker. Scholl seems to understand this—she asserts it herself several times—but the emphasis keeps coming back to all the negative tropes Scholl herself is arguing against while she simultaneously perpetuates them.
Still, there are many positive things in this book. The section on how antis have hijacked the discussion of sex work and the way they conflate sex work and sex trafficking is something everyone should read. Working conditions at strip clubs—the way dancers are forced to pay fees to work—are an important issue for anyone concerned with sex workers’ rights. The acknowledgement that stigma surrounding sex work contributes to sex workers being exploited by club owners is an important one, though this should be contextualized beyond just sex work and applied to the wider problem of workers’ rights under capitalism. Yes, there are specific nuances that make the struggle for workers’ right in legal sex work difficult due to stigma but again, most (and arguably, all) workers in all industries experience exploitation to a certain extent. This is not specific to sex work.
Eventually, as I read on, it seemed to me that Scholl herself is against the sex industry, though she doesn’t explicitly say so:
The profamily and antitrafficking movements work to end the sex trade, but I don’t agree with their methods.
Lia Scholl (Photo via Chalice Press)
Really, if one is pro-sex workers’ rights, there should be no support—methodological or otherwise—for antis who are seeking to put us out of work. Scholl writes that rather than fighting the sex industry head-on, we should be fighting the social and economic injustice that leads people, particularly women, into the sex industry in the first place. Her model of how to respond to sex workers sounds great on paper (“don’t use victim language, respect sex workers’ choices and agency” etc.) , but if your final goal is to eradicate my livelihood, then you will never gain my trust or that of other workers. Perhaps I should be taking her words in good faith, but having had so much experience with antis who use concern as a justification for silencing and oppressing us, it’s not an easy thing to do.
At the end of the day, this book is not for us. This is a book written for Christians, particularly those in ministry, who want to serve sex workers. This book does not challenge the fundamental assumption in Christianity that sex work is immoral and damaging but rather asserts that sex workers are people too, whom the the ministry could serve if they were just more aware of the realities of our lives. To serve parishioners and people in general is a fundamental point in Christian ministry, so I cannot fault Scholl for this message. I do think this book is a big step in the right direction towards sex workers not being treated like shit by Christians who are receptive, but it only makes it part of the way there. My difficulty reading this is working out where Scholl’s own opinions end and where her desire to placate both sex workers and Christians (as there is no mention of people like me, who are both) begin. I had hoped for a book that challenged the premise that sex workers cannot be Christians, that we’re not spiritual; that pushed other Christians, particularly those in hierarchies, to welcome us into their churches. In the end, Scholl seems unaware that in addition to all the stigma and whore hate we experience, we are also isolated from our kin in our own churches and religious communities. Scholl seems to be well versed in theology, with a deep understanding of scripture. Her expertise here strikes me as a missed opportunity. Challenging traditional interpretations of the Bible might be too controversial for what is already no doubt a controversial book, but there isn’t really a way to form a truly pro-sex worker argument without doing so.
As a Christian sex worker, there is so much to be desired from my own Christian community. I have been shunned and ignored by almost every non-sex worker Christian I have disclosed my status to, including those in queer Christian groups. Ideally, I would like to be welcomed into my Church without having to hide what I do, and I want the same for every other sex worker. I would like my work not to be held up as sinful. I would like to be able to be baptized without renouncing it and throwing my sex working brothers and sisters under the bus. Unfortunately, the teachings against full service sex work specifically go right back to the New Testament with Mary Magdalene, everyone’s favorite exited prostitute. Sex work is a challenge to fundamental Christian theology and New Testament interpretation. Indeed, doctrinal justifications for whorephobia within Christianity could fill a book all by themselves. Perhaps Scholl or another Christian ally will write a book which deconstructs them soon. I certainly hope so, anyway.
But for now, we can at least hearken back to a story retold in I Heart Sex Workers: Christ dined with the most sinful of the community, the tax collectors, and when criticized, stated that those who are ill are most in need of a physician. By that logic, whether or not Christian churches can accept sex work as moral, sex workers should be embraced by these churches. Moreover, we don’t see priests, preachers and clergy denouncing the IRS or the ATO. Clearly, there is something else going on here beyond theology, and if Christian leaders and laypeople are serious about inclusion, they are going to need to start asking some tough questions.
I heart sex workers:
Written by Lia Claire Scholl and published by Chalise Press,
