Can a provider of sexual services, a sex worker (someone society might have formerly referred to as a “prostitute”), facilitate healing? How can transformation take place within such an exchange? Although we don’t often hear about them, there are plenty of anthologies of sexual healers’ stories, for those who would seek them out.
Why is sexual healing necessary? Joseph Kramer, founder of the Body Electric School and a self-professed “sacred prostitute“ says:
You can talk to a psychotherapist about sexual abuse for years, but for intervention on the physical plane, we call on a sacred intimate…It is in the physical world that the trauma took place and that’s where the healing most effectively takes place.[1]
The terms “sexual trauma” and “sexual abuse” carry a lot of stigma and emotional charge, and it is easy to forget how commonly they are experienced and how woven sexual violence is into our society and everyday lives. I would argue that most of us carry sexual pain and trauma from living in a sexually dysfunctional society and participating in toxic relationships.
A legitimized role for sexual healers is not that far of a leap from what already exists as an (almost) socially acceptable role in society today: sexual surrogates who are sometimes recommended by psychotherapists as an adjunct to talking therapy. Still controversial, they are gaining acceptance. The International Professional Surrogates Association has a training program that qualifies one to work within the realms of traditional medicine and therapy.[2]
Cheryl Cohen Greene was one of the earliest sex surrogates and wrote her memoir An Intimate Life about her experience, which became a major Hollywood picture starring Helen Hunt entitled The Sessions. The focus of the film was Greene’s client Mark, who was severely disabled by polio as a kid and lived most of his life in an iron lung. While patients with extreme disability are often made the focus of sex surrogacy stories, I’d love to see the focus shift to more subtle cases that Greene and others deal with. Much more common are stories of people with fears around intimacy, performance anxiety, shame around sexuality, etc. There are parallels here with the medical marijuana laws, which first focused on the most extreme cases of people incapacitated by severe pain or nausea as a side effect of chemotherapy, which was otherwise untreatable. Now those medical marijuana laws cover everything from aches and pains to trouble sleeping. I believe the focus on extreme stories in sex surrogacy will act as a similar gateway, bringing attention to the possible healing that anyone can receive from seeing a sex surrogate or sexual healer. As Greene says:
When I chip away the particularities and personal eccentricities, I almost always find that much of what they struggle with on the deepest levels are issues few of us would find alien. Loneliness, anxiety, fear, guilt, or shame around sexual feelings, low self-esteem, poor body image, and body ignorance are just a few in the constellation of all-too-common issues that I see every day.[3]
I personally have some mixed feelings about this kind of sex surrogacy. On one hand, it’s wonderful to have a more legitimized role for healing in sex work. Growing acceptance and sympathy for this work takes American society a step closer to accepting and understanding sex work in general. On the other, this work can feel very clinical at times and my concerns about the limits of that model parallel my concerns about the medicalization of psychedelics.
Some people will benefit from a clinical approach, in the same way that some find doctors in white coats and hospital rooms comforting. But I believe for most people the process can be much more organic – as it already is in some sex work. It’s important that in the process of legitimizing one approach, we don’t forget to recognize those who have been doing this work for a long time and leave space for that work to continue and to be valued alongside these new more socially sanctioned roles. While a more institutionalized approach may be appealing, Greene’s memoir also makes it clear that for all the formal processes and clear boundaries supposedly drawn in this kind of clinical surrogacy work, the humanity of the interaction is still at play. Greene fell in love with and married one of her surrogates, mirroring the common tales of sex workers who end up marrying johns.
In fact there are many parallels between Greene’s story and those of other sex workers. For example, Green writes:
It isn’t unusual for clients to reveal things to me that they keep hidden, even within the safety of their therapist’s office. It is part of what makes surrogacy work fascinating and often beautiful. The surrogate’s bedroom is a unique environment in which both professional and client are vulnerable. Being naked together is a powerful equalizer, and before any touch even occurs the mood can shift and intimacy can deepen so that people begin to talk more freely than they ever thought they would. Mostly, they share experiences that have had an impact on their lives, but about which they’ve always been too ashamed or embarrassed to reveal. Just saying them aloud can be liberating for some clients because suddenly they can gain a perspective few of us have when we hold tight to a secret.[4]
Sex surrogates are not the only sex workers who have noticed the impact that shared nudity, and therefore shared vulnerability, have on their sessions. It automatically creates a level of trust and shared experience, facilitating conversations that clients are unable to have with others in their life.
One of Greene’s clients, Derek, significantly challenged the clinical and procedural way in which she usually worked. Derek was obsessed with one particular fantasy of being tied up and taunted by a woman, the way he had been taunted by a girl he knew as a kid. His obsession with this fantasy disgusted his wife and was ruining his marriage. His therapist believed it would be helpful for him to live out the fantasy and sent him to Greene. After four sessions with her, acting out the fantasy, the idea of being restrained lost its power over him and he was able to start to find mutual sources of arousal with his wife and enjoy being with her without the fantasy. I know many BDSM sex workers who are consciously facilitating similar healing. Here the line between sex worker and sex surrogate partner looks thin indeed. As Greene says:
Working with Derek reminded me of the need for flexibility in the surrogate process. Sexuality is complicated and some clients benefit from stepping outside of the protocol…That Derek responded so well reminded me of the value of hands-on work, even when it takes a form that stretches beyond the usual parameters.[5]
At the time of writing her memoir, at seventy years old, Greene still felt that (besides having kids) this surrogacy work was the best and most important thing she had done in her life. There are many sex workers and sexual healers who would say the same.
The more I’ve read about “surrogate partners” the more I feel that this is a distinct category necessarily created to sidestep the stigma of prostitution and yet allow space for a role that psychologists are now beginning to see is actually crucial to society. Some cases may be best held in this container, but in most cases any sex worker who intends for their work to be healing can achieve similar results. The sex workers featured in the rest of this piece mostly work outside of the world of surrogacy work. I agree when sex surrogate Barbara Roberts writes, “The temple must now be disguised as a psychological or medical clinic. Now a worshipper must have a pathological condition; a sexual disorder classification is the temple entrance requirement. The psychotherapist and medical doctor have become the new high priest/ess.”[6]
Two prominent and important features that seem to run through all these healers’ stories is their ability to offer acceptance and presence. As sexological bodyworker Margaret Wade explains:
A common trait of all the sacred intimates in this book is their full acceptance of themselves and those who come to work with them. Such complete acceptance is so rare that it is much more radical than any of the physical activities that take place during their sessions. Perhaps that is why we so often hear that shame is released in sacred healing sessions – because, in the presence of a loving person who accepts another ‘warts and all,’ a person can let go of their self-loathing and recriminations, even if for one precious moment.
…Presence means that you are met ‘where you are’ physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Presence doesn’t mean that the person is like you in all these ways, but that she respects you and accepts you fully. To be present also means that the sacred healer attends fully to the individual(s) he is with and the situation he is in, without jumping to conclusions about what is happening inside the person, and without attempting to lead or control. Sacred intimates often describe their experience of being present as being an open conduit for healing, as channeling divine energy, or as just being a witness for their client. They limit their own personal input, and allow healing energy to take over the situation. That level of presence allows wonderful and amazing things to happen.[7]
Similar to presence is the gift of allowing a person to feel wanted and received, something not everyone gets to feel in life very often. Sensual masseuse Carolyn Elderberry says, “The men…knew they wanted their wives to desire them; they hadn’t realized the extra dimension of their frustration was their need to be wanted and received.”[8]
Many clients have issues around trust, intimacy, sharing and surrender – all things that are fundamental to healthy and fulfilling relationships. Sexual healing sessions can allow clients to experience a relaxed and safe sensual experience with a guide, and to build their ability to have these experiences with another (non-working) partner. None of these sexual healers (and not all sex workers in general, for that matter) think of their job as providing a strictly sexual service, although sex is often (not always) a part of the time they share with their clients. It is the service of providing intimacy.
Other aspects of healing can occur through exploration of fantasies, as Greene witnessed with her client Derek. BDSM and sexuality authors and educators Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy explain their understanding of how this works:
We suspect that many of the dark fantasies we love to explore in SM are paths to the Shadow – paths to parts of ourselves that we wish to bring back into consciousness, split-off parts that we want to welcome back so that we can be whole. Seen in this way, the theater of SM is a sort of psychodrama, tracing a scary painful path to some dark cave in our iceberg, but with someone else to share in the journey and act as mirror to validate our experience…What if bringing our dark fears into the light of awareness can heal us, make us more whole?[9]
It’s clear that the exploration of fantasies and the sharing of intimacy can be powerfully healing. But if all this healing is already possible in the world of sex surrogacy, why would anyone choose to brave the underworld of sensual massage and other services that could have them arrested for prostitution? As self-described sacred prostitute Selena Truth put it:
One of the pleasures of doing sensual massage was that I reached people who would never have come to see me if I had called my work “spiritual” or “healing.” Yet often they were the ones most in need of healing. The promise of an exotic sexual experience lured them in, and once they were there, they often received much more than just a hand job. Like with this man, I used the opening that happened with orgasm as a way in, to plant seeds of self-loving, heart-healing and a glimpse of a broader reality.[10]
As Carol Queen, activist and self-identified call girl says:
To guide another person to orgasm, to hold and caress, to provide companionship and initiation to new forms of sex, to embody the Divine and embrace the seeker – these are healing and holy acts. Every prostitute can do these things, whether or not s/he understands their spiritual potential.[11]
To see an act of prostitution as “healing” or “holy” is to turn Judeo-Christian and puritanical values on their head, to look at the world through a completely different lens. A lens that is sex-positive, that embraces embodied spirituality (rather than a spirituality that denies the body), one that seeks immanence rather than transcendence. Using this lens a whole new range of possibilities for healing, connection and oneness appear.
[1] Blackburn, Reclaiming Eros, 61.
[2] Stubbs, Women of the Light, 48.
[3] Greene and Garano, An Intimate Life, 23.
[4] Ibid., 80.
[5] Ibid., 195.
[6] Gilmore, “The Whore and the Holy One,” 8.
[7] Blackburn, Reclaiming Eros, 215, 219.
[8] Stubbs, Women of the Light, 164.
[9] Easton and Hardy, Radical Ecstasy, 167.
[10] Truth, Tales of a Sacred Prostitute, 103–104.
[11] Stubbs, Women of the Light, 201.