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How can you thrive as a sex worker, navigating the fact that you have no real safety while also performing erotic fantasies and sex at the same time? How can you care for yourself as clients bring in their pain, shame, and fear and expect you to heal them?
Lola Davina is here to help us answer those questions and more. Her new book, “Thriving in Sex Work,” is like a big sister’s guide to caring for yourself as a sex worker.
We talk about the unrealistic expectations clients often come in with, being financially responsible, setting boundaries and trusting your gut, creating rituals to celebrate small and big wins, and a whole lot more.
It’s fascinating and practical. It’s one of my favorite chats, and I think you’ll hear why.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Lola and I talk about:
- Social media and online forums and how they’ve helped sex workers to connect, find support, and get their stories out. It’s a new world for sex workers.
- The isolation that sex workers can feel and the extreme emotional labor that sex workers deal with since we are all so confused and lost around our sexuality. Sex workers not only have to navigate their own needs and bodies, but also try to please and navigate other people’s same confusion.
- The weird space that sex workers occupy – both elevated and denigrated. Both human and yet expected to perform sexual perfection and pleasure at all times.
- How sex workers, even sex workers doing legal sex work, are banned from access financial systems and support from so many banks and online systems like PayPal.
- Sex workers are always at risk, they are always under threat, they never have full protection, and yet they’re expected to be open, vulnerable, sexual, turned on, and other-worldly at the same time for clients. The tension is bizarre and unlike anything else.
- Why the story and visibility of the sex industry is so skewed. Sex workers are 100% of our focus – they are the face and the representation, and yet it is the consumers of sex work who make up the majority of the folks engaging in sex work and we never examine them. They are nameless, faceless entities. The burden on sex workers is immense and unfair.
- How sex workers are dehumanized by clients, and why clients really are struggling with their own desires and stories. The entire system is broken and toxic, and yet sex workers have to carry so much of the burden.
- Love and the weird space it does or does not occupy in sex work.
- Just because we’re turned on or pay for sex work doesn’t mean we get to behave badly or let our reptilian brain take over. We have a responsibility to behave in a way that recognizes we are dealing with another human being.
- Sex work shouldn’t be for therapy, for feeling loved and seen, for working our stuff out. Therapy is for that. We should be engaging with sex work from a place of abundance and joy and fun.
- It’s better to say, “I know it” than “I knew it.” In other words, trust your gut always. Always.
- How most of us stumble around without any clue of how to interact with our bodies and sexuality, and so in our confusion we expect someone outside of ourselves to make sense of the feelings happening inside of us. It’s a toxic combination that sets us all up for failure.
- Our unrealistic expectations around sex always being a peak experience. It’s so challenging.
- Why some fantasies don’t need to be lived out, and why the pressure to live out some fantasies can be way too much pressure.
- Boundary setting and what Lola learned over the years as a sex worker.
- Sex workers set boundaries and make you take certain steps for a reason. It’s thought out, it’s intentional, it’s important to them. Please respect that and don’t try to skip steps or nudge boundaries. It’s shitty and disrespectful.
- The importance of celebrating milestones and treating yourself in sex work. Plus, why it’s critical to have an exit plan – to write your own story of how you left sex work.
Resources from this episode
About Lola Davina
Lola Davina has spent more than 25 years in and around the sex industry, working as a stripper, dominatrix, porn actress, and escort over a fifteen-year period. She has earned an M.A. in Human Sexuality and an M.S. in Nonprofit Fundraising, and writes a self-care and wellness column for YNOTcam.com.
You can stay in touch with Lola at loladavina.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter @Lola_Davina.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey you! It’s Dawn Serra with another episode of Sex Gets Real. I’m really excited about this week’s episode. I had the awesome opportunity to read a book called “Thriving in Sex Work,” by Lola Davina. This week, Lola and I talk all about the really interesting spaces that sex workers navigate, the ways that Lola has learned can help sex workers stay resilient and cared for. Also, just the really interesting spaces that we ask sex workers to navigate. For instance, sex workers don’t actually have any kind of guarantees or safety when it comes to their bodies, to legality, to financial issues. So they have this burden, this cultural burden that they have to carry and navigate. But at the same time, clients expect them to be open and vulnerable and connected and turned on and the epitome of their fantasy. They have these really intense things that they have to carry.
Dawn Serra: Also, clients often bring in all kinds of shame and hurt and fear, expecting sex workers to cure them. It’s so much to ask of these human beings. Yet, we never think about that or we rarely do. We also never really think about the fact that for every sex worker in the world, there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of people consuming what it is that they’re putting out. But we rarely turn and look at the people who consume sex work. We don’t know their names or their faces. We only know the sex workers. They become the face of this enormous industry. It’s a fascinating conversation, I am so excited about.
Before I read you Lola’s bio, so that you can learn a little about her, I just want to remind you, every other week, me and a handful of really cool folks get together online for a 90-minute live call to geek out and brainstorm and practice all kinds of really cool things. This week, our call happens on September 3rd, which is the day this episode comes out. We’re talking all about that murky space where shame and desire collide. How do you navigate the things that you want to explore sexually, if you’re also deeply ashamed or embarrassed by them. I think it’s going to be a really fascinating conversation. If you’re interested in joining us, you can go to dawnserra.com/ep177, for this week’s episode, to find a link. It’s called, “Sex is a Social Skill.” Let’s learn about Lola.
Dawn Serra: Lola Davina has spent more than 25 years in and around the sex industry, working as a stripper, dominatrix, porn actress, and escort over a 15 year period. She’s earned an M.A. in Human Sexuality and an M.S. in Nonprofit Fundraising. She also writes a self-care and wellness column for ynotcam.com.
Also, really quickly, today I had my very first Somatic Experiencing session, which is a powerful trauma practice that was created by Peter Levine. It’s me exploring the reconciliation and integration of some of my trauma. It feels scary and nerve-racking. But I’m also really, really curious and excited to move into this space to see what kind of healing and new feelings I can have around this space. Once I get a little bit more practice in it and I learn more about it, I would love to share it with all of you. Of course, we are ready to dive in. Here is me and Lola Davina.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Lola. I’m so happy you’re here.
Lola Davina: Oh. Thank you, Dawn. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me onto your program.
Dawn Serra: Oh, you’re so welcome. I have been following you for, I don’t know, probably around a year at least, and watching you promoting your book, “Thriving in Sex Work,” and having all of these amazing feels about the work that you’re doing to really help sex workers to be able to find the support that they need and run a business that we need to run business. I just so admire the work that you’re doing in this world.
Lola Davina: Well, that’s very dear of you to say. Believe it or not, on the day that we’re actually recording this – I don’t know what… – it’s the one year anniversary of my social media campaign. It’s funny ‘cause I was going to write something about it just to mark it as an anniversary. Believe me, social media neophyte, I struggled with social performance anxiety for the first six months. I would put stuff out there, and then I’d cringe when I go back to look at my feed and stuff. So that’s very kind of you to say. I’m glad that my message is getting out there. I don’t feel like I’m a natural social media person.
But what I can say is social media, God bless it. Sex work Twitter, the forums on Facebook, what’s happening over on Tumblr. There are there are forums now online for sex workers to connect and to share those stories, and God willing, with whatever’s happening in the wider world, will continue. But yes, there is a place, there’s a space for sex workers to talk to each other and to get their stories out. I’m happy to be stepping into it and have something to say about it.
Dawn Serra: Yes. I’m going to encourage people who are either current sex workers or who have been thinking about entering sex work or even people who just really need some great business advice, to check out your book because it’s full of so much love and thoughtfulness. I think what’s so clear about what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to basically write this great big permission slip around all the things that sex workers do and don’t get recognized for. To the way that my husband described it, because he read the book alongside me, was “Lola’s like the best big sister in the world who wants to say, ‘It’s OK. Yes, this is hard. Here’s all the things I’ve learned, so you don’t have to go through the same things that I did.’” It feels like this great big, I don’t know, space of love and acceptance. And here’s things you can do that might make your life a little easier.
Lola Davina: Well, thank you. That was really beautiful feedback that just sent shivers up my spine. When I wrote the book… I worked for many years. I worked for about eight years in the sex industry over a 15 year period. It was broken up a couple ways. I worked for a while in my early 20s, and then again in my early 30s. When I think back on those times, when I feel back into those years, what I remember was such a feeling of loneliness and longing for connection, longing for my experience to not be isolated. I have wonderful, wonderful friends. My best friends today, I mean, most of my closest friends are sex workers or former sex workers. We’re all former now. Of course, we could commiserate. We could talk about what we were feeling and what we were going through.
But even with that wonderful support network that I was so blessed to have, I certainly had those times when my friends were unavailable. You send out the text message, nothing comes back. Your friend is out of town. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and we’ve just had this horrible call, and you’re just all alone in the world. As I was writing, I kept going, feeling back into those emotions, feeling back into that place, what would I have to say to myself? What would I have to say to my best friend? What would I have to say to someone who’s going through that? How can you get through this? People, as sexual creatures–
Lola Davina: Dawn, I know in all of this stuff that you’re working on, sexual creatures, we bumble along. We have these bodies that are built for pleasure. We explore them as we go. But sexuality is this place where oftentimes we can’t always see clearly. We don’t always know what we’re feeling. We don’t always know what we’re thinking. So often we know what’s best for us, we know what the right thing to do is, but perhaps we’re nervous, perhaps we’re afraid in sex work. This really comes up a lot. You’ve got several forces on any given interaction.
This ferocious competition from other sex workers feeling like if you don’t perform, if you don’t compete, you’re not going to be able to make money, you’re not going to be able to survive. You’re dealing with your own limitations – your physical limitations, your psychological limitations – of where you want to go sexually, and you’re trying to please this other person. That is really complex emotional labor. Holy crap balls! That is hard work. You have to fire on a lot of cylinders to keep your brain straight to do that line of work.
Lola Davina: The inspiration or the impetus to write this book was to help people figure out what they’re feeling, know what it is that they know, trust their own guts, trust themselves in order to do this work more clearly. The number of times when I just needed someone in my life when I was doing sex work who just told me, “You know what Lola? You’re doing a good job. You are doing a good job.” I just needed that right? Anyway, that’s a little bit about why I wrote the book. I’m very, very glad to hear that, at least, that voice or that intentionality was landing.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. It really came through to me that so much of what you were offering was that you want people to recognize that to really thrive, that they need to work on their own emotions, and sitting in uncomfortable feelings, and having resilience through stuff that sometimes is just hard. Because that just comes with the job. And finding the power to set boundaries, and to recognize that while you might lose clients for setting boundaries, you’re also going to gain clients that really respect you for that, and lots of advice around the importance of being financially savvy and being very deliberate about your money. Then having a therapist and friends.
I mean, it’s advice that would work for pretty much anywhere in the world. But I think you’re so right. You said something really great before we hopped on, that sex workers are constantly explaining themselves and just basically asking the world, “See my humanity.” So I think that there’s something really beautiful and specifically speaking to sex workers and saying, “You do deserve money, and you do deserve respect. You deserve to be financially responsible and take care of yourself. You deserve friends and take yourself to therapy. I mean, it’s like a love letter of all the ways to care for yourself in a space where pretty much the rest of the world is saying, “You’re not worthy. You don’t deserve this. I don’t see you as fully human, and I’m going to use you.”
Lola Davina: God, yes. Let me just have some feels right now. Just letting it all wash over me. Yeah. There’s something– Just what you said, it’s said over and over again that sex workers are not seen as fully human, as seen as disposable. There’s a lot of reasons for that. I mean, why we punish people for sexual pleasure in our societies? Such a deep question. It’s a mystery that will go on long after you and I are dead and gone.
But there’s something else specifically about sex workers that I think is another piece of the puzzle. I like to promote it whenever I can. I touched on it in the book, but maybe I don’t articulate it directly, which is sex workers, just as creatures, just as ideas or things operate in this liminal, fantasy place, where everyone’s fucking and everyone’s hot and everyone’s getting… It’s like endless pleasure. Everyone’s having orgasms and telling all these naughty things. Sex workers step into this liminal, powerful, erotic space. That’s their domain, their kingdom, queendom, their realm. I can just tell you, as a mere mortal, I, most of the time, don’t feel that right. But you’re asked to perform that and held to that expectation and that level of perfection and seamlessness. It’s another place where I just want to put as a touchstone or as a marker for people who are interested in sex work, who maybe in the sex industry and maybe haven’t thought about it themselves.
Lola Davina: Sex workers are operating from this place where they’re both elevated and denigrated at the same time. Anyone who’s willing to do this work, anyone who’s willing to walk and step into that space, you’re having to deal with all of that complexity. So yes, when you add the stigma, the loneliness, the isolation, you talked about money, but needing to be careful with your finances that so many sex workers… I think I can say, pretty much approaching all of the sex workers I’ve ever known, have struggled with finances. Not necessarily that they didn’t make good money, but that they maybe didn’t know how to manage it. Or, they were afraid to get the help that they needed. These are really important questions. That social isolation and stigma isolates us from getting the help that we need to take good care of ourselves. That’s a huge problem right there.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I mean, that’s reinforced over and over again by the society we live in. So many of us know that PayPal and Kickstarter and banks won’t work with sex workers and won’t allow someone who’s doing sex work. Even legal forms of sex work like pornography or camming, they’re not allowed to use certain financial systems because they find it offensive and gross – whatever else they want to say it is. But there’s limited options for even acquiring money and holding money. I think that that just reinforces this belief that, “No one’s going to want to help me. Accountants aren’t accessible to me. Tax experts aren’t…”
Lola Davina: Medical doctors are going to be skeeved out or judgmental or put that in my file, and that’s going to be a mark on my story for the rest of my life. Yes, it’s deep. It is pervasive, and it is continually reinforced that somehow you’re less of a citizen. You have less bodily integrity. You have less financial integrity. You have less legal integrity. All of these things are under threat. And for fucking what? Can I just say backup just for one second to say, “For what?” What’s that great George Carlin line? Of all the things that someone should be punished paying for, an orgasm shouldn’t be one.
Dawn Serra: Yes!
Lola Davina: I’m sorry people. OK. We’re talking safe, sane, and consensual. We’re talking about between adults. I understand there are problems in the sex industry. But please, what are we talking about here?
Dawn Serra: Right, right. I mean, we all know when we sit down and think about it, that the more we make something drive into the shadows, the more it becomes dangerous for everyone involved. Where if we then open ourselves up to, “Hey, let’s make this safe for folks and remove the stigma,” then we can so much more easily identify the abuse and offer support where it needs to be. It’s just this really backwards way of, “I’m going to make everyone hide, and that’s how we help them.”
Lola Davina: Right. Amen, sister. Oh, my goodness. You should be advocating for the sex industry. Thank you. Yes, I couldn’t have said it more succinctly myself. It is a tremendous problem. But I guess I’ll just go back to my own experience. My experience, I’m sure, it’s not universal. But I certainly encounter this. I see it everywhere. Just the internal cringing, this internal self-defensiveness, expecting the world to be a dangerous place because it is indeed a dangerous place, and have that self reinforcing. Because as a sex worker, you do not have full protection, any which way – bodily, financial. I would say bodily, legal, financial, you do not have full protection. You are always at risk. You are always under threat. At the same time, you’re expected to be exposed and open and expansive and turned on and ready to go in this uninhibited sexual creature. That’s a lot.
Dawn Serra: It’s a lot. Yeah. I think that’s just such a beautiful way to examine the expectations that are placed on sex workers and how that contradicts the reality. We expect when we show up and work with a sex worker, most clients, I think, expect this otherworldly fantasy where all their dreams come true. They’re wanted, and they’re seen as desirable. They want the sex worker to want to be there. They want the sex worker to want them, and forget all of the labor and the fear and the work and the danger and everything else that got you to that moment. It’s this very bizarre crashing of realities.
Lola Davina: Yeah. The tension and the client expectation, which certainly I was a student of for years. I mean, I had a PhD in studying what clients wanted. I mean, that’s part of what made it fascinating. I’ll be honest, it’s part of the reason why I like the work. But yes, as a client, there’s desire. There’s sexual, emotional, whatever, kind of laundry list of desire. The idea of you pay for it, there’s this weird bifurcation of now what that transaction becomes. On the one hand, it’s somehow cheapened and lessened because it doesn’t happen organically because the two of you lock eyes across a crowded room. You go off and have hot passionate sex. This is transactional experience.
But then there’s also this expectation too that it should enter some mind-blowing realm because you’re buying your fantasy. This is other piece of the sex work puzzle which I think never get investigated. I talk a little bit about it in the book. The fact that as sex workers, we are the entirety of the visibility of the face of the sex industry – this vast multi, multi billion dollar industry. All of all of the gaze, all the attention is turned towards sex workers. But there is an exponentially large population of people, if you turn your gaze 180 degrees that makes up the clientele.
Lola Davina: I’ve got a figure. For every sex worker alive and working today, there has to be somewhere on an order of 10 to 100 people who are purchasing their services. This vast oceanic group of people who are nameless, faceless, motiveless. Anyway, I’m getting a little bit far field. But just to say that how we as consumers come to the sex industry. What we want, what we desire is so unexamined, and in many cases so deeply, deeply shameful. It’s shameful because we have to pay for it. It’s shameful because maybe we think our desires are way out of bounds or out of reach or threatened to make us lose control. Sex workers are dealing with a lot of other people’s shame. Oh boy. I call it outsourcing shame or shame in reverse. Like, “I’m feeling shameful about my desires. I’m paying you, so why don’t you carry that for me. I want to put that shit on you because I don’t like the way it feels.” Yeah, that’s a big part of the job.
Dawn Serra: If you’d indulge me, three of my favorite paragraphs are on this very topic of outsourcing shame. May I share that with everybody?
Lola Davina: Please, go right ahead.
Dawn Serra: OK. I pulled this out because I was like, “Oh. my god. I have to find a way to read this because it’s so important. OK. Here’s what it says: “Getting our heads right isn’t enough to immunize us from the on the job shame. That’s because clients show up with all their baggage expecting us to deal. They want to be turned on. They want to get off. They crave beauty, kink, variety, danger, and role play. They’re insecure about their bodies. They want to be irresistible. They feel weird about fantasies that threatened to veer out of control. They want us to read their thoughts, blow their minds, and deliver peak experiences.
But sex isn’t something you’re supposed to pay for. Shouldn’t you get it for free by looking fine, smelling good, and all the rest? Clients internalize the message, ‘There is something wrong with me.’ So strip clubs are for losers, dungeons are for creeps, and seeing prostitutes is pathetic. Not only that, as high as clients soar, that’s how far they plummet. And can you get any higher than having sex just for yourself? Clients crash back to Earth naked and exposed.
Dawn Serra: The sex industry reeks of the same sticky regret as carnivals and casinos. All that dislocation and self-loathing has to go somewhere. Like black holes in reverse, clients bend badness and blame away from themselves. I call it outsourcing shame. They demean and objectify us, leering and groping and calling us names. The humiliation of their non-normative desires can be especially excruciating, so they dole out particularly dehumanizing treatment to BBW, people of color, pro doms, and queers. Clients also wrestle with guilt. Many clients are married or partnered or come from religious backgrounds, taking a little taste of something they don’t want anyone to know about. Nobody wants to feel bad while paying to feel good, so they shunt their ick onto us, sluts for pay.
Oh, my god. It gives me chills.
Lola Davina: That’s the sex industry right there. I don’t know. I can’t say it any… I cannot condense it down any better than that. That right there, that’s my manifesto right there. That’s the work in a nutshell. At least from the clients end. If you want to know what the sex industry is like, you want to know what it’s like, that’s the job right there. If you can manage that, you’ll be fine. You need worry about nothing else. Really you’ll be fine. I’m being a little bit facetious. But, yeah.
I guess I just have to be honest. I mean, if you get on Twitter, if you hear what sex workers are talking about, if you read the blogs, if you watch all the documentaries and stuff like that, I mean, every sex worker alive I know knows what I’m talking about. I just wonder if everybody else in the world knows what that means, what that is about.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I mean, I see the way, and I’m going to speak in generalizations right here. I’m not saying everyone is this way. But I will say my observations are that the ways that men treat sex workers on Twitter, porn performers, cam folks as though that human being is existing for their gaze and for their needs, and when suddenly that person doesn’t respond or does something that they don’t like, they take it very personally.
One of the reasons why I want to talk about this is so that we can start asking ourselves, “Am I doing that? Am I basically erasing the humanity of someone whose whole job is to basically put themselves out there for people to say all kinds of things, and to force fantasies and desires upon because we’re too scared to examine ourselves and to do the work?”
Lola Davina: I do love that idea. So to have some compassion, just to step back and just take one step back. I have some compassion for where clients are coming from. I do. I do think there are several enormous speed bumps that they themselves are dealing with. I don’t mean to place all blame and all badness on clients. First of all, they have their desires. I mean, what are we talking about? I mean, if there were no demand, there would be no supply. So there is this desire to have sex on demand. Whether it’s contact sex like prostitution or just porn images or whatever it is, you know, phone sex, it’s all different kinds of things. There’s a tremendous desire for this. Yet what you talk about, the lack of seeing another… Once you place yourself out in the marketplace as a sex worker, when you put yourself, you step into that ring and say, “I’m going to do this. I’m putting myself out there in whatever capacity – whether it’s my voice, my appearance, my body, my sexual fantasies, whatever it is” – that somehow that person loses their humanity.
Let’s not just assign this to men. Let’s just say this is all across the gender spectrum. We do this in all different kinds of ways. I mean, some of the most ferocious enforcers of the stigma around sex work are women policing women. I can just tell you that right now. I can’t speak from firsthand experience about the trans experience, but yeah, trans folks struggle as well. Believe me, it’s all over. It’s all over the map. I mean, there’s all different kinds of lines of force. But just to say that as a sex worker, when you step into that ring and say, “OK. I’m putting myself up to be judged in this way, that somehow, yes, for many, many, many clients, humanity dies.”
Lola Davina: There’s something about the sexual arousal process that I think we could talk about as sexologists. We could certainly talk about what happens when certain parts of the brain are activated. Especially if there isn’t all of the courtship and getting to know and love feelings that are involved. I did not address this in this book because I felt it was too enormous a topic to handle. I didn’t know how to handle it gracefully. I thought I might actually turn more people off than draw people into the conversation. But the fact that love, as part of sex, sits hovering outside of every sexual act, that love is either a force by being there or by not being there. Its absence, in some ways, is more potent than its presence is another huge factor in sex work. That as much as we all crave – well, most of us – sexual pleasure, almost all of us crave love too or affirmation or to be seen to have our humanity affirmed. There are many different ways you can cut and slice that.
But that, again, when you introduce money, when it becomes transactional, does that die? Is it even possible? And that question right there, that issue is such a thorny, sticky wicket. I know plenty of transactional sex workers who did just fine. They never loved their clients. They never even liked them. And they let them know. There were clients who were fine with that. They weren’t there to be liked. They were there to get off. There’s a market for that. I knew sex workers who fell madly in love with their clients and essentially were courtisans essentially had long term relationships, big, elaborate, complicated emotional relationships that had a financial component to it. All of this is possible.
Lola Davina: But the fact is that, from some little Twitter avatar or some little ad that’s running on, some cam website, you have no idea as a consumer what a person is there for, what they’re capable of. I have tremendous compassion as a client. Even if I could clearly articulate what I wanted sexually, to go online and try and find it in that ocean of craziness that’s on the internet, I feel bad for them. Yeah. Because literally you do not know what you’re going to get. You might be totally turned on by somebody by the way they look and their attitude and personality is just way out of whack. You make me want to write another book, Dawn. Oh, my god!
Dawn Serra: Yay!
Lola Davina: Love and sex work. Oh, my god.
Dawn Serra: That will be huge.
Lola Davina: Oh, my god. Nuclear bombs going off everywhere. But yeah. Just bring it back back to something a little bit more concrete. Just this idea that we are consumers of commodified sexuality. We have some responsibility to not act like teenagers and just say, “I have arousal in my private parts. Now I get to act however I want.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Lola Davina: I am dealing with other human beings on the other side of this exchange that the reptilian parts of my brain don’t get to take over. Because I’m paying I get to act however I want.
Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah. There’s something really interesting that, I don’t know, I like to think about, especially as I was reading your book. Because there’s so much shame around sex in general. I mean, we have a very sex negative culture most parts of the Western world. Because we aren’t able to actually express our fantasies, our desires, to feel seen, because we’re terrified that if we share this fantasy with a spouse that they’re going to divorce us. Of course, so many people are showing up and consuming sex work from a place of disappointment, of loneliness, of sadness, of feeling like they can never be seen for who they are. I think if we existed in a society that saw sex work as very legitimate labor, and as a place where healing really could happen, in addition to just want to do this because it’s fun, I think we could be so much more honest when we showed up around, “I’m feeling very lonely and isolated and sad. I want to find someone that can just make me feel held for a little while.” But I think because of what it is, people show up and can’t use that language and instead behave badly.
Lola Davina: Right. Well, I have to say, even for men and even as a sex worker, and even as someone who was paid for… I’ve gone to strip clubs. I have had partners that we’ve hired escorts for three ways and stuff. I’m not squeamish around any of this. But when you start talking about wanting sex in order to fill emotions like loneliness, not feeling desirable– If you come to sex work, I have to say, this is a strip club patron. When I’ve got my wad of twenties. I’m going out with my girls, and we’re going to go have a good time. I mean, it’s coming from this place, like, “I’m here to have a good time. I feel great about myself. This is sexy. I’m sexy. Everyone’s sexy. Everyone’s having a great time.” Obviously, there’s not a whole lot of tension in that scenario. Not a lot of conflict is what I’m trying to say. There might be sexual tension, but there’s not a conflict. But if I’m saying, “This is how I feel about my body. This is how I’m feeling about my partner,” or lack of partner, when you start trying to solve negative emotions with sex, and then you’re going to pay for it on top of that, wooh!
Yeah. I mean, people toss around casually the notion that sex work is a lot like therapy. And it is. It is. But it is unstructured. It is unguided. I do think that there is some other piece of being complete, alive, awake, connected, honest with ourselves as sexual creatures, that sex work maybe is not necessarily what should be filling that. It does in our society. That’s where a lot of people go to literally get sex therapy is – the sex industry. That’s where they’re working their stuff out. I don’t necessarily think that that’s a good thing. There are plenty of very gifted sex workers who show up and arrive and are ready to do it. But most aren’t.
Lola Davina: I mean, for God’s sakes, not to be agist, the vast majority of sex workers are in their teens and early 20s. They’re not there to fix the problems of middle aged people in their weird ass aging bodies, whatever they’re feeling. A lot of stuff is flying around that doesn’t belong there in the sex industry, unfortunately. I don’t know how to fix that.
Again, with my project, my hope is to try and give sex workers the tools they need to get clear on their own shit, so they can take care of themselves, job one. So they can show up to work every day as clear headed and as healthy as they possibly can. But that doesn’t necessarily solve the broader cultural problem of–
Dawn Serra: Patriarchy.
Lola Davina: Yeah, patriarchy and like you say, sex negativity and what it means to have a body over the entire course of our lives, a body that changes, to have relationships that change. These are enormous, not just structural. These are existential questions. That somehow, again, we’re going to take all that shit, and we’re going to shove it off in this gray/black market industry where there’s no barrier to entry, and everyone’s just trying to do the best they can do. I mean, my god! No wonder it’s fucked up. I mean, it’s a difficult, difficult place.
Dawn Serra: Talking about sex workers and really helping them to take care of themselves. Because it’s clear, this is a really big, throbbing, squeaky mess of all kinds of things that people bring to the table. There were two things that I loved so much that you talked about. The first was this phrase that I think is important for all of us to implement in our lives. But I just want to read it, and it’s, “It’s better to say I know it than I knew it. Trust your gut.”
Lola Davina: If you’re reading that, that’s not my quote.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Lola Davina: That’s from that book… Oh, god. It slipped out of my head. The Wisdom of Fear, is that what’s called?
Dawn Serra: I can’t remember. I pulled that line out. Yeah.
Lola Davina: It is this classic book, I think it’s called The Gift of Fear. I’m sorry. And it’s a classic. It’s been around for 30 years. I forgot the author’s name. It’s got a Dutch name. Forgive me. But yes. I didn’t come up with that idea. But I certainly think that it’s important in sex work. I mean, certainly because there’s often danger involved in sex work. A lot of the job is reading people and if people feel off, trusting your gut, trusting when those little hairs go up on the back of your neck, like this person means to do me harm, that you absolutely need to honor that. But yes. I think you could also expand the notion out, the bigger, much broader notion about as sexual beings, as we understand ourselves, if we take some responsibility for ourselves and not just–
Dawn, let me ask you this. You’ve studied sex and you’ve talked to so many different people about sexuality, what is it about sex? Why do we do this? We expect other people to fix or help us to heal or to understand ourselves as sexual creatures. I mean, I know it’s all wrapped up in romance and stuff, too. It’s all this muddy, murky stuff where it’s like, “I’m having all these feelings inside my body. What I want is for someone outside of me to sort all that shit out, and then it’s all going to make some sense.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Lola Davina: That’s a pretty radical experiment that we are asking our teenagers to do and our young people to do. I think most of us wander into our 30s and 40s, going like, “OK–”
Dawn Serra: “I think I’m getting it.”
Lola Davina: Yeah. “Other people are great, but I think I really need to sort this out for myself.” Other people are intoxicating, and it can make me feel things that I can’t feel on my own. But if you don’t sort this stuff out, you’re just wandering around bumping into people. You’re like, “OK. Fix me. Make me feel amazing.” That’s not a good sexual place to come from.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because it puts so much pressure on other people to try and figure you out, when you’re the only one in your body with your sensations and feelings–
Lola Davina: And fantasies.
Dawn Serra: I think part of it… Honestly, I do think part of it comes from, in Western culture, we are taught from the youngest of ages that the answers are outside of ourselves. That teachers will give us the knowledge, that parents will tell us the things, and we’re never taught that we are our own source of wisdom.
So I think when it comes to something where it’s already hushed and secretive and not really talked about, and we know we’re not supposed to touch ourselves, so we can’t really figure it out for ourselves. Then it gets to a place where now we’re throbbing with hormones and feelings, we have no idea how to look inside and find the answers because no one’s told us that’s what we can do.
Lola Davina: Right. But then on the flip side, then you’ve got porn. There is a vast majority of porn out there, don’t get me wrong. I mean, not to just say, “Oh, all porn is ridiculous and all porn is bad or not real.” I mean, there’s plenty of porn that is real. But then just to take in information that way – “This is how your sexual… This is what porn sex should look like” – not always helpful. Yeah. It’s a big complicated subject. It is something, again, that interface between client and sex worker that is continually being worked out. You certainly get clients of all levels of consciousness and self-awareness and emotional self-knowledge for sure.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I mean, I worked with this wonderful sex worker who does Yoni massage and Tantra, and said that she could help me work through some rape trauma that I have. It was honestly one of the most healing powerful experiences. But we spent so much time talking about expectations and what work I needed to do.
I think there’s so much power in approaching sex work from a place of mutuality, of how can I bring myself and what should I do beforehand? What are your expectations? How can I respect you and honor you, so when we show up, we can create something wonderful together? I don’t know how to get to a place where we have more conversations in that space, but I think it definitely has to do with people grappling with some shame.
Lola Davina: Yeah. I mean, there’s absolutely no question about it. I’ve been working on this metaphor– Let’s just see how badly I mess it up. This is Lola thinking in action. I’ve been working on this metaphor about sex, sort of, in some ways being like food. That we need food throughout our lives. We crave sexual pleasure throughout our lives. But like food, sex can have all different kinds of meanings. Sex can be one of the most sacred and intimate exchanges between people, and it literally creates life. I mean, it’s how we make life. I mean, it goes as deep as we get. It can be all wrapped up in love and long term devotion and connection and craving for closeness. It could also be like a drive thru experience at McDonald’s though. Not every orgasm makes a person. Not every orgasm is your wedding night. There’s plenty of sex that’s just… It’s no more personal than a sneeze. Yeah.
It’s meaningful for me to hear your story and hear that you found somebody who could give you that kind of intentionality and purpose and help you on your journey. I’m so glad that you found that. Not everyone is looking for that in a sex work experience. Certainly, I don’t need every orgasm to fucking blow my mind, be writing about it 30 years later or whatever.
Dawn Serra: That will be exhausting.
Lola Davina: I have really no time for anything else to do in my day. There’s room for– some room for that. Just lighten up people. Yeah. There’s a great Steely Dan line. It’s like, “It’s just a spasm. It’s cheap, but it’s not free.” I mean, let’s just put things into some kind of perspective. Having non-consequential experiences with different partners can be part of a broader set just being alive and having a body and doesn’t mark us as broken or damaged or shameful or dirty. We all know this intuitively. We just have an absolutely schizophrenic culture around sex work, where we hold it up as the highest possible ideal. When the best looking, two people in a movie kiss, their souls unite. They’re married forever. They’re bonded as one. They go off and make babies. Or, you get online and you can look at porn. You can jerk off and do whatever you want. I don’t know. I mean, OK, true. But you know that doesn’t seem to be a lot… Where’s the room for everything that happens in between, where most of us are muddling through our ordinary lives?
Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. That’s something I’ve talked a lot about on the show. I think sometimes we get ourselves into trouble when we expect sex to always be amazing and orgasm-producing and transcendent. Why can’t we also celebrate ordinary sex in positions that we’re really familiar with? Sometimes you just want a five-minute quickie that’s not mind blowing, but just feels like a nice little, “OK. I feel better. I can move on with my day.” It just puts so much performance pressure on all of us to have these– I don’t know. To expect transcendence every time, it makes us feel like we’re failing in our bodies when we can’t do that. Then it makes us feel like our relationships are failing when they’re not happening. Then we show up to situations with sex workers and expect that as well. I mean, that’s tremendous pressure to be putting on everyone including ourselves.
Lola Davina: Right, right. Thank you. I couldn’t have said it better. I do think there is this weird… There are many, many, many, many things I wish I could change about mindset towards the sex industry, and somewhere on the top ten list would be that, “Couldn’t it just be OK for not every experience to be a peak level experience? Couldn’t you just go– I mean, obviously, I think there are sex workers who are not trying to deliver peak experiences and their clients who are not seeking that out either. But it is certainly one of the pressures that you do encounter quite a bit that is very unrealistic, and clients often stand in their own way. That’s just another thing I can tell you right now.
I mean, I had clients who… I was a dominatrix for a couple years. I would have clients write out these long, three-page, handwritten letters. The movie was going on in their mind. They had the movie in their mind. They saw me. They saw the space. They saw themselves. They were fully turned on, and they will go through the whole story. I would carefully read it. I’m a conscientious person, and I would begin. We get 15 minutes into and they’re like, “This isn’t what I thought it was going to be.” We can talk about a lot of different reasons why that might be, but putting this tremendous pressure to make the fantasy real.
Lola Davina: Maybe that’s not how fantasies always work. Maybe the video, maybe the porn loop in his mind is actually hotter than doing it. I certainly know. I have porn loops in my head that I don’t want to act out at all. They stay safely in the dark, little masturbatory corners of my brain. That’s where they belong.
Dawn Serra: Locked in the spank bank.
Lola Davina: No urge to do that in real life. But yeah. That is unfortunate that people don’t know that about themselves. That is unfortunate. Or maybe they find out through sex workers. Maybe they learned that the hard way. I think you find that in relationships too, where it’s like, “Oh. I have this fantasy. I want to do this that and the other. Then it doesn’t work out with your partner. Then it’s such a disappointment and defeatism. It’s like, ”Oh. Well, It doesn’t work. We can’t share that together, so I’m letting you down.” So much pressure – pressure to be perfect.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something else that came through in the book a lot. This is definitely a place where I’m still learning, and I’m not very skilled at this. But you had a lot of talk around setting boundaries, and how easy it is to let your boundaries go because you’re afraid you won’t get more clients or you’re not going to make your goal for the month or that they might go somewhere else. But how by setting boundaries, and doing them both for safety and respect and from a place of, “Here are the things that I like to do,” rather than the negative of, “Here’s all the things I don’t like to do.” How that actually helped you to attract really wonderful clients that were consistent and that you felt safe with, and where you could do interesting things with. Can we talk a little bit about how to get better at setting boundaries and how they can protect us?
Lola Davina: Yes! Yay! Thank you. I love that you noticed that. It’s huge. i said before that I had this bifurcated sex work experience. Many, many, many times I have this interesting bifocal vision of how I operated in my 20s and then how I operated in my 30s. I had a different body. I had different agendas, and all these things. But one of the things I can honestly say is that, in my 20s, I had no fucking boundaries at all. I was ridiculous. It was literally like I used to run these little ads. It was before the internet. There were no photos or anything. Maybe you’ve heard of the Spectator. You’d be the local sex rag or whatever. You’d have a little two inches or whatever. Like 75 words to describe yourself, and somebody would call and basically if they agreed to my fee, sounded like they liked me, and I don’t know, we both had time free at the same time, I was like, “Sure. Come on over.” Oh, they didn’t expressly told me that they were serial killer and were going to chop me to bits. Those are my four criteria for having somebody come over to my house to have sex with me.
When I look back on that, I’m like, “Oh. my fucking god. OK.” It was just like, basically, I just thought, “Well, if somebody wants to come see me then I guess that’s what I’m here for.” Even at that young age, I think I had a little bit more game – for want of a better term – when it came to the actual sex itself. I wasn’t completely unbounded with the sex that I was willing to have. But just that idea that it took me a long fucking time to learn how to say no, to learn the different ways of saying no, how to say no in different ways. But also just how to redirect. And what you point out, maybe most important of all is to really lead with what’s OK, and to just make that very, very plain – “This is what I want. This is what I like. This is what I do best. This is what I’m here for. If this is what you want, I’m on your gal.” Rather than focusing on the stuff that I wouldn’t do. But whenever something would come up that wasn’t in my rulebook, laying the marker down and saying, “No, I don’t do this.”
Lola Davina: In my 30s, I just had a much different outlook. Part of the reason is because I knew that I had gotten a terrible financial trouble and was working my way out of it. So I knew I had to work for years. I knew I had to keep body and mind together in order to keep doing this work. I knew that I had to set boundaries because I had these memories of screwing up and letting asshats in and being wrecked for days at a time.
It is a leap of faith, of course, to say, “I am going to draw this hard boundary, and if I lose clients because of that, I’m OK with that. Because if I don’t draw that boundary, I can’t continue to do this work.” But as I say, I know I didn’t come up with this idea. I don’t know. I probably mangled the wording, but the idea that every decision that you make in your advertising is a choice. Everything you do in your advertising is a choice, and every choice is going to attract somebody, and it’s going to push somebody away. I think you can just say that is like an absolute. Even in a photoshoot, you decide to wear your blue teddy instead of your lavender bra and panties, you’re going to turn away the lavender crowd and the blue crowd is going to be sad, whatever. That’d be lousy with my metaphor.
Lola Davina: But really, every single choice, someone’s going to be more attracted to it, someone’s going to be repelled by it. If you can just hold on to that idea and just really grab onto it and just say, “You know what, I am not here for everyone. I am not everyone’s cup of tea. So what we’re going to do now is we are going to determine who my absolute right proper client is, and we are going to hold out for that.” That’s a powerful place to work from. That is for a long term sustainable clientele. I don’t know another way to do it. Let’s just put it that way. The whole, “You’re just going to say yes to whoever comes through, and just deal with them when they get there,” that’s not a long term strategy. That is not a long term solution.
But, yes, there is something about trusting yourself. I tried to get too spiritual in the book, but trusting the universe, trusting in abundance, trusting that there will be enough people who will find you and who will resonate to what you’re offering. Because the thing is, if you let the people who don’t honor your boundaries in, you will burn out. You won’t be able to do the work. Forget about whether or not there’s enough clients out there in the world. You won’t be able to do the work.
Dawn Serra: For people listening who are interested in working with sex workers, don’t be the person who pushes the boundaries and tries to get someone to do something that they don’t want to do. One, it’s shitty and disrespectful. But two, those boundaries have been set for a reason. It’s about either safety or enjoyment. So let’s play within the bounds of that, instead of trying to get people to do something that they’re not interested in doing, don’t want to do, don’t feel safe doing. That’s true for relationships and also for business transactions.
Lola Davina: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying that. For anyone who was a potential client or has been a client in the past and thinks about these things, most sex workers that have been around for… Obviously, there’s many, many sex workers come and go. But anyone who’s been around for at least a little while, they’ve given some serious thought to the image that they’re projecting out in the world. They’ve given time and thought to their image, to what they share with you on their website. If they have a protocol, the protocol that they want you to follow, it’s not slapdash. This isn’t thrown up in a hurry.
If a sex worker has gone through the trouble of giving you some steps to take to see them, please take them. If you would like to see them, that’s what they’re there for. There’s intentionality. Sex worker saying, “You can come and see me. You can come and have a wonderful, magical enchanted time, if you would please do these things for me to let me know that you honor me and respect me and see me and are willing to play by my rules.” I really don’t think that that is too much to ask. Even if you’re experiencing some sexual tingling in your genitals, please let the higher parts of your brain still work and function and say, “I owe it to this person, if they’re going to give me a nice time, to go through the steps that they’ve outlined.” I don’t think that’s too much to ask in order to have your fun, sexy time and have it be as good as you want it to be. You need to hold up your end of that. Just showing up with money is not enough?
Dawn Serra: Yes. Just like any other exchange where we’re paying money for something. I mean, you can’t show up to a massage therapist or to someone who’s going to do your hair with money in hand, and then treat them like shit or expect them to do something that they don’t do.
Lola Davina: Right, exactly. My hair appointment is at four. I’m going to show up at five. I’m going to be in a shitty, bad mood. I’m already drunk. I’m going to call you names – “Yeah, can we just get started? Oh, by the way I want a pedicure while I’m at it.” No! You don’t get to do any of that. You won’t treat anybody like that. Those basic service provider etiquette, it holds true for sex workers as well.
Dawn Serra: There was this one part in the book that I just thought was so charming. You were talking about ways that both yourself and other people have done some ritual around celebrating their milestones. For people who work for great big companies, we have things like rewards when you reach your ten year anniversary and all kinds of certificates that get handed out. But when you work for yourself, you don’t really get that. I would love to just read these rituals that a few folks did, and then just talk a little bit about the importance of ritual and celebrating for yourself.
Lola Davina: Yeah, that’d be great.
Dawn Serra: OK. So you wrote: “Tara Burns, self-described eco-whore, hobo stripper, built an altar to honor the blow jobs she gave to pay for the land she owns in Alaska. One escort friend of mine performed a ritual celebrating the fact she made it to menopause without getting pregnant. Another escort friend threw herself a retirement party, inviting both her favorite clients and her fellow whores to celebrate her 20 years in the biz. When I finally dug myself out of debt and paid off my last creditor, I rewarded myself with a trip to Paris. I bought the cheapest ticket, slept on a friend’s sofa, and ate bread and cheese for a week because I couldn’t afford to eat out. I wasn’t rich, but I was free.”
What is your recommendation to sex workers around just having some rituals, to celebrate big milestones or to honor the end of your journey as you’re exiting the biz? What is your recommendation for folks in those situations?
Lola Davina: Well, my mind is immediately sparked by two things. I mean, one, is just to bring it down and just make it a little bit more granular and just say, “I think, as a sex worker, that you should celebrate not just not just leaving the biz, you have lots of have lots of milestones. If you needed that on a daily basis, you fucking go and get it, whatever it is.” Obviously, I’m not saying that go and get, you know a massage every day. Obviously, people can’t afford that. Maybe people in sex work are doing this work because they can’t afford to do other things. But that you just consciously think about what feels like a reward. Whether it’s just walking, taking a long, beautiful walk outside or picking up the phone and talking to someone or whatever that treat is, that you reward yourself for a job well done. I think that’s really important. I think it’s one of the ways that, as sex workers, we need to replenish ourselves in order to keep the juices flowing.
But more broadly, the other thing that I was thinking as you were reading that, is that having a notion of leaving sex work as a positive thing, as a positive goal that has been achieved rather than a shameful episode of your life that, thank God, is finally or it’s somehow failing, limping out of the business because you somehow, for some reason, no longer able to do the work. I’m going to say something that I think is probably pretty loaded and pretty charged. But I think one of the many, many, many things about sex work that makes it complicated and powerful and can be very painful when you’re in it, is the thought of not doing sex work anymore, what would be the reason why you’re not doing sex work anymore? Maybe it’s because you’ve moved on to a new phase of your life, and you have found something else to do, and your money concerns are being taken care of some other way.
Lola Davina: But of course, there’s always that other fear that looks behind it, which is you’re not doing sex work anymore because nobody finds you sexual or you’re too sick to do the work or you could no longer attract clients. That’s terrifying. If your identity, if you know what you’re doing to make money is you’re sexually appealing enough to people for them to pay you, I mean, if you can’t do that work anymore, that’s deep. That’s painful. That’s scary.
I think for a lot of people, the prospect of the end of sex work can be scary in two ways. There’s the kind of, “Well, how do I support myself afterwards?” That’s a big question for any of us making its way in the world. It’s not easy. But there’s this other scary, lurking fear, which is, “Oh, my god. What if I can’t do this work anymore because I can’t do this work anymore.”
Lola Davina: So when I think about the end of sex work, coming to the end of sex work and anyone’s natural life, having conclude gracefully, which I state up front at the beginning of the book. I want two things for every sex worker alive, which is for them to thrive in the job as they’re doing it, and for them to transition gracefully into something else. To help ease that transition, definitely setting a milestone, definitely having a ritual, definitely having a celebration, is one way to make a joyful stepping off into the next phase of your life. So that’s one of the reasons why I definitely want to call it out.
But also just having the spaciousness of mind to think about not doing sex work anymore and have it not be terrifying. You have to plan for that graceful transition. Because for most of us, that doesn’t happen right away. It doesn’t happen all at once. We don’t just fall into a straight job or marry into a more comfortable financial position or inherit some wealth or whatever it might be. I mean, for most of us, we stumble along getting through that transition.
Lola Davina: So yes. I think the milestone is very important. The idea of having your sex work experience be celebrated, and whether that’s on a daily basis or a weekly basis or a monthly basis. Maybe once a month, you do something really nice for yourself, you splurge a little bit. Set some money aside that feels like you could afford to do something really nice for yourself – “I got through another month, and was able to pay all my bills. I get a treat for that.”
But also at the end too, to really look at it as, to think about it in these terms of, “You did a really fucking hard job for a while. Now you’re not going to do it anymore. But let’s celebrate that. However, that feels meaningful.” I love the idea of doing it in community or doing some bucket list thing. But whatever it is, to look towards that and to think about that – How would you like your sex work job to end someday?
Dawn Serra: Ah! I love it so much. I totally want to just keep jamming. I have so many other things I pulled out, but we’re already a little over the hour. I want to respect everyone’s time. So I would love it if you would share with everyone how they can connect with you online, find the book, stay in touch.
Lola Davina: Sure. Yes. Well, I have Lola Davina. You can find me at loladavina.com. That’s LOLA DAVINA dot com. You’ll see my smiling mug all over that website. You can find me over on Twitter. I’m also @Lola_Davina on Twitter. And you can find me on Facebook, too. Although, I’m not as active over there. But yes.
Can I just say one thing? I just want to let your listeners know, if you like the sound of my voice, if you’ve been listening to me for an hour, it can’t be too terrible. I’ve started reading some of the chapters of “Thriving in Sex Work” aloud, and they’re available on SoundCloud. If you just go over to soundcloud.com. They’re also available on iTunes, too. You can search for either Lola Davina on Soundcloud and iTunes or “Thriving in Sex Work”. Every week, I’ll be releasing a new chapter that I’m reading aloud. It’s not for everyone, but I think we can agree, Dawn, many, many, many people like taking in their happy sex information through their ears rather than their eyes. I think just with the power of the voice, it’s a little different. So I’ve been doing that, and I’ve been getting some nice feedback from that.
Dawn Serra: Well, I will have links to everything, all the things on dawnserra.com/sexgetsrealpod and in the show notes for this episode that you can just click through. Find the book, follow Lola, hear those chapters that she’s been reading. Lola, thank you so much for doing this with me today. It was so much fun.
Lola Davina: Oh, my god. It was just my pleasure. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for all that you’re doing, Dawn. I mean, you’re spreading the good word. So thank you for what you’re doing.
Dawn Serra: You’re welcome. I want to thank everyone who listened. If you’ve got any questions or comments about what you heard on this episode or something you’d like to hear in the future, you can use the contact form at dawnserra.com. There’s an anonymous option. So if you’re shy, you can use that. Of course, you can check out all of Lola’s links for this episode at dawnserra.com/sexgetsrealpod as well. Thank you so much for being here. I will talk to you next time. Bye.