Schrodinger’s Whore; Sex Work and Academia

The first time I noticed the difference between myself and my peers was receiving a client email while studying at the university library, tilting my phone screen to ensure no wandering eyes would happen upon the deviant contents. Up until this point I had cruised along on the notion that my work does not differentiate me from anyone, with the naivety of the baby sex worker yet to encounter any real discrimination. While my cohort arranged student parties and stressed about assignment deadlines, I worried about whether I'd have time to write essays in between skype dates and cash meets - as I write this now, nearly four years later, I'm waiting for the familiar buzz of my work phone.

For those of us that engage in performative sex for money, the ability to hide parts of our identity and carefully curate ourselves comes naturally. For those of us that also engage in academia and study, this need for discretion can be of great importance to retain authority in our respective fields. This is due to the wide held belief, through generations of misogyny and whorephobia, that an individual cannot be a sexual being and an academic, nor a scholar and a whore.

The archetype of the whore exists as a manifestation of carnal desire, and often little more than that. She exists in direct contrast to the virtuous Madonna, the virginal image of purity and serenity, the whore exists for ruination and sin. While the Madonna is proclaimed in literature as the love interest, the main character, the victim to be rescued and molded to her creator’s image, the whore exists as a secondary character, a character-arc or subplot, the first one to be killed in the horror movie. Lilith cast from the Garden of Eden.

Similarly, the archetype of the scholar exists in a rigid dichotomy to that of the whore. The scholar is pious and submissive, a beacon of respectability and a symbol for upholding social institutions. The whore does not fit into this archetype, existing outside of the realm of social norms around morality, often in direct opposition to social institutions - rare it is to meet a sex worker that isn't motivated by some kind of ‘fuck the system’ ideology. I'm sure we’ve all been subject at one point during a family reunion to a patronizing “But so-and-so’s kid is studying medicine!” not so much “But their kid is a professional companion!”.

Research by Sagar et al (2015) suggests that around 5% of students engage in some form of sex work alongside their studies. We often exist leading a Hannah Montana-esque double life, sometimes wig and all. The duality between sitting in lecture halls to being paid by the minute to step on a man’s genitals does not go amiss. Academia and sex are opposing ideologies within themselves, especially when we consider the high censorship of sex adjacent subjects within the education system on a base level - I distinctly remember my own high school sex education showing us a diagram of a vagina without a clitoris. This feeling of shame around sex and pleasure within academic institutions is amplified as we move up the chain.

The general consensus is that the Whore and the Scholar cannot exist in tandem - that both exist in contrast to one another. Similar to the Madonna-Whore complex, it’s difficult for people to view the duality of an individual as both someone who enjoys sex and as a professional without one overpowering the other. This is especially relevant when considering the notion of Goffman’s spoiled identity (1963), in which an aspect of an individual’s identity goes on to tarnish their reputation, credibility, and respectability as a whole. This is also relevant in the field of academia which is already an unbalanced playing field steeped in a history of androcentricity. Femme presenting people face what is referred to as patriarchal bargaining (Kandyioti, 1988), in which they must strategize within a series of patriarchal constraints for survival, both culturally and societally. In essence, they may play a man’s game to ensure success in a man’s world. These strategies carry the implication that femmes are aware of this bargaining and hold greater autonomy with the use of it - they may receive more benefit from playing their assigned role in a man’s game.

This is a notion I’ve seen repeated throughout my personal career as a sex worker and through getting to know the community, the idea that if men will objectify us anyway - by virtue of simply existing in a feminine body - that we may as well cash in on it ourselves. In an ideal world, that sexualisation would only occur as and when we consent to it, however the unfortunate reality is that this is simply not the case. Taking the power back by way of financial compensation allows us to access areas which may have been inaccessible to us otherwise, doing sex work to pay for tuition is not a new phenomenon.

People go into sex work for a range of reasons, though mainly for it’s ability to provide, however the spoiled identity persists for those who are ‘out’ and especially for those who are still actively working. It may be easier for academia to stomach the idea of the retired sex worker, where the deviance is relegated to the past, however that same deviant identity is still viewed as a pollutant, making it difficult for sex workers to be taken seriously by their academic counterparts (Ahearne, 2015). Due to this, sex workers within academia often participate in negotiations of stigma, such as hiding their identity, or choosing carefully when to disclose their line of work, adapting in order to compensate for the negative connotations that the stigma provides. However, some student sex workers may try to use their student status to improve respectability due to the belief that the work is only temporary and to fund education (Simpson, 2021). Despite the implication of whorearchy by utilizing a student status to differentiate themselves from the ‘other’, it does provide evidence that the identity of the scholar and that of the whore may exist in some form of beneficial relationship. However, if we consider this relationship from the perspective of the scholar, the inverse may be true.

In my own experience as a student sex worker, men seem happier to part with their hard earned money when they think it's going to a noble cause such as helping the damsel in distress pay for their education, feeding into a savior complex I can only presume. However, those same men react with almost instant dismissal when presented with a sex worker in a professional or academic setting, and I feel I must consider how much information I disclose about myself to the institution in order to counterbalance this. When I remove myself from the positives of the work, I’m reminded of the isolation many of us feel having to navigate those archetypes within ourselves that exist in contrast, the loneliness of having to keep a secret. For those of us that are ‘out’ in our professional lives, loneliness exists in a vacuum of well meaning questions from our counterparts who just can’t quite understand - and when I do humor them with an answer I make sure not to mention anything too deviant, nothing too scandalous as to not upset the delicate balance of things.

The feeling of separation within my own identity feeds into the feelings of imposter syndrome; Do I really belong in this space if I must hide such an integral part of my identity? How can I be confined to a space where I must exist but not exist at the same time?

The truth is that it is important and necessary for sex workers to take up space within academia, that we can exist as both the scholar and the whore in tandem. Amplifying the voices of sex workers within academia must be present to counteract the stigma, especially in institutional spaces where the intersectionality of other identities can place sex workers at a greater disadvantage. We are often the topic of research studies made with the greatest of intentions, but it’s of the utmost importance that our own voices are heard. Simplified by the adage; “Nothing about us, without us”.

Works Cited:
Ahearne, G. “Between the Sex industry & Academia.” Graduate Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 11 (2), 2015.
Goffman, E. Stigma: Notes on the management of Spoiled Identity. 1963.
Kandiyoti, D. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender & Society, vol. 2, 1988.
Sagar, T. “The Students Sex Work Project: Research Summary.” Centre for Criminal Justice and Criminology, 2015.
Simpson, J. “Students, Sex Work and Negotiations of Stigma in the UK & Australia.” Sage Journals, vol. 24, no. 3, 2021.

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