I Ain’t Saying She’s A Gold Digger: Sex Work, Money, And Upward Mobility
By Margot St. Vincent
There are few things that make the patriarchy feel as pungent and in-your-face as working in the sex industry.
There’s a book, have you heard of it? It’s called Jane Sexes it Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire. I read it in college, when I was obsessing about Marilyn Chamber’s Behind the Green Door, and Linda Lovelace and Deepthroat and all of the books she (poorly) wrote after. So I can’t be certain that I would find the book politically solid these days. However! The anthology made a huge impact on my young self, mostly because of an essay called, “My Mother Was a High-Femme Whore.”
Remember in Clueless, when Cher realizes she’s in love? “OH MY GOD!” Inner Cher thinks, in a montage of flashbacks, “I LOVE JOSH!” I felt similarly when I read this essay —
“OH MY GOD,” Inner Margot thought, in a flash of sweaty bedroom scenes, times when I’ve gotten off on being wanted, and yes, at times using sex to subvert systems of power within patriarchy (masters tools, masters house, etc) — “I’M A HIGH FEMME WHORE!”
I was grappling with my fiercely insatiable sex drive at the time, and my newfound baby feminism, which to me, had been a smorgasbord of leftover 70’s anti-femininity, and the war on…
