Have you paid for sex? I have. Let's talk about this show
I created a new handle for this thread, understandably. Fascinating, top-shelf show. It gets a great deal right, but like all artsy character studies, it would be a mistake to see this as, "the show that shows what prostitution is like." People on this board have compared it to Diary of a Call Girl, which is like comparing apples to iced tea; their genre is simply too different. I've only watched through Ep 3 (somehow most people here have already watched the whole show...? I'm watching it as it airs). Chelsea and Avery are very specific characters; she is like some prostitutes I have known, but not at all like most.
- What the show gets chillingly right
(1) The awkward dynamics of consent regarding sex work. Any feminist who thinks that consent is impossible is oversimplifying the situation, but any client who doesn't admit that the dynamics are compromised is fooling himself. There's a chilling moment in Ep 2, the first time Chelsea sleeps with her first client. After checking in about the envelope and offering her a drink, disorienting music cuts in, as the client walks across the room, sits down, and kisses her. So many people on this board, and throughout my life, have made the argument that prostitution isn't that different from dating, because we all pay for sex in different ways. If you wine and dine a woman and then @#$@ her, that isn't any different; the only difference is that she won't leave afterwards.
Hogwash, I say. Of course there are grey areas (trophy wives, sugar babies, etc.), but we do not "all" pay for sex. I have been out on hundreds of dates with dozens of women. I have an eccentric, shy personality, no game at all, an uninteresting career, and am unattractive in a manner that causes people to wonder if I have a communicable disease (use your imagination). So I wine and dine them, and about half the time we become friends, about half the time we never see each other again, and on the way to one of these options, they sometimes sleep with me once. So guys, if when you wine and dine women, they sleep with you, that's because THEY WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU. I've never heard a woman say that she feels obligated to have sex because you've picked up the check. Maybe this helps her WANT to sleep with you, but that's the difference. Prostitutes don't want to sleep with me any more than other women do; they sleep with me because I pay them. It's a transaction, and I accept that. Those of you who have never had to pay for sex have no idea what you're talking about; listening to each other's problems, living together, even long-term financial support that involves real relationship; these things are relational, not transactional. Chelsea would never have gone to bed with that man because he bought her dinner. She's a young hot woman who likes young hot guys.
But that moment when physical intimacy begins holy @#$@ can it be awkward. Because even when the 'let's get to know each other' conversation hasn't gone well, even if you don't PARTICULARLY like each other, you know, and they know, how the evening is expected to end. Any morally decent client (I'd like to think I am one) is always ready to simply have the session end without sex, but let's face it; a sex worker wouldn't make much bank if she didn't sleep with men she found awkward, or unattractive. One you're sitting on the bed, whether she's feeling it or not (remember how Chelsea's eyes are open during the first few kisses), she goes through with it. And no, hardcore second-wave feminists, this does not make it rape. You can consent to having bad sex; couples do it all the time.
What this show, and every show, gets 'wrong' by omission
No show that I have ever seen (the film The Sessions does this) covers the positive side of sex work. The Girlfriend Experience is about men who don't HAVE to pay for sex (it's just more convenient, when when they pay for it the women are younger), and focuses on a sex worker who doesn't particularly want to be doing it. A very different show would focus on a cadre of sex-positive feminist prostitutes in a place like Berkeley or San Francisco or Portland who saw themselves as healers and muses, that they are genuinely in the business of intimacy, and they overcome those awkward moments mentioned above expertly, even lovingly. Who are poly, who eventually have partners who know what they do. Chelsea clearly is not that kind of sex worker; you don't see her a few years from now giving an out-and-proud speech about sex-workers rights. Deception and closed doors is endemic to what she does. When I have seen prostitutes that act like Chelsea, who are instantly interested in everything I have to say, who pretend (but not very well) to like me, pretend to have an orgasm, all with some sense of wanting to simultaneously suck me in and get it over with, I simply don't see them again. But everything about the dynamics in this show seems quite realistic, because for these types of clients, that's actually what they want. They don't want a girlfriend. They want a girlfriend experience.
I don't think that the world is ready for a show about the out-and-proud sex-positive feminist prostitute. But the world of sex work is a very dark, lonely world, and I welcome this show as exposing one corner of it with true artistry. Any other clients...thoughts? It takes a few minutes to create a new ID, and I'm sure people here would love to hear what you have to say...