| | Msr. Zhang,
one commits no blunder for asking an honest question of fact; I am a courtesan, thus a sex worker, and proudly so. Originally, 'twas only an experiment with a fantasy and a form of going "on strike" against a world that had never valued any talent of my mind. But I found out, to my great surprise, that I found in the Life both a true joy and an art of existing as a crafted personality that has become a passion, and as well a means to keep the time and independence for art and literary philosophy. As such, I chose courtesanship as a career, and life has been exotic and strange ever since.
I have always been fascinated by sex work, recently in the contemporary pro-sex feminism of an Annie Sprinkle or Carol Leigh; otherwise from an amateur historians interest in classical history, whose social record has been so greviously distorted by Christian and proto-Christian writers I am tempted to say that 'classical' period is a false concept(see my post on 'sacred sexuality'). When I became transgendered and suddenly found myself in a body that could be beautiful, I took the courage to live out what I had never had the courage to admit was my desire.
I admit here that I realizes- after the choice- that I did not have many other options. It was not about finances, it is simply that I had found my whole life that an experimental and flamboyant personality uneased and terrified most authority figures, I suspect because part of the price you pay in out society for being allowed a forum for 'success' is to suppress your color, your passion, your boldness, and learn to wear the same suit, tie, and 'sensible' interests as everyone else; when someone openly finds their enjoyment in expressions denied, doors are slammed by the 'respectable'. Being transgendered, with a feminine style disturbing apparent to everyone but myself, did not help. I had gone through years where universities, employers, landlords, etc. slammed evasive doors in my face, and I got very sick of the Horatio Alger, Republican demand I take their injustice as my guilt in not 'making it' in Big Brave Nation.
So when an experiment in living struck, not gold essentially, but happiness, I decided to switch my view of life from an artist-philosopher's to a courtesan's. And I suddenly found that being explicit and proud about what I wanted in life, the color and passion that I, working, may live, but most cannot afford, and the defense of this life's excellences, cost me little but the rejection of fear-choked bigots who had always thrown snide execration my way anyway... but that those of intellect and gracious spirit were willing to check their premises in the face of manifest quality. The mainstream world, which always tied its judgements of competence to one's willingness to shoulder a Protestant Ethic of social duty, would not tolerate my talents.. unless I paid prices in authenticity I just could not pay and want to live. This world, in which 'morality' is not pretended and people do not repress but enact real desires, is one where there is a real trader principle, because happiness never in itself springs from evil. In the straight world, I was valued to the degree I could bootleg technical ability past a repression of selfish joy. In this world, while it occurs to few to give any credit to me or my abilities, I am implicitly valued and explicitly rewarded to the degree of my passion and enthusiasm, not to the degree of repression. As someone for whom the 'creative', not the technical, aspect of the virtue of productivity is primary, the ability to make my life in the creation of desirable personae has given me my passion back.
That says, the Life does have its dangers, and not merely the instrumental dangers created by the malicious activities of state and an irrational, sexphobic society which believes one's eroticism should be hidden behind closed doors. And I don't mean the overpublicized risks, which I once feared greatly but research has convinced me are outrageously exaggerated. What I mean is that the Life is an intensified kin or subspecies of the performing arts, and it requires the ability to shift the soul to different angles of value without losing integrity. This is not impossible, and is achieved by any successful sex worker. But it is difficult and does require a polyvalent conception of personality antithetical to our civilization's Augustian/Cartesian heritage. Such specialization enacts a Price in spirit; then again, so do all specializations. But I am saddened that art is more appropriate to me now than philosophy, and that such artistic excellence as I can create will not be recognize as much beyond sensationalism. But I can do my art, and it is mine, in a way that those who make the compromises of respectability will never truthfully say.
And unfortunately, too much and certainly the most visible aspects of the Life are drenched in a mediocrity which is simply the crude sex wanted by a society that denounces sex as crude. I am doing my best to seek venues insulated from this kind of thing; I do not respond, nor do people when they are free of social judgement so much respond, to our 'male values' four-letter-word notions of sexuality. But that is not the entire industry; I myself have taken classes here in San Francisco on erotic massage, tantra*, oral sex, and read up on a literature I did not know existed, and it is truly shocking to realize just how vast the range of sexual pleasure is that is taboo in our society. And I am still pretty new to the Life and consider myself at bare competence as a sex worker, and still in training as a courtesan and professional submissive; I look ahead and am a little overwhelmed by what I should really learn, from art history and classical history (your teacher did not tell you how the isharatru practiced, or the details of initiation to the Korai, I can be rather certain), to music, dance, to wine (my tardy thanks to a reader for help here)... actually, as a great deal of doing the Life well is, like comedy, a matter of timing, I seriously propose that mathematics and Newtonian physics might make good preparatory study for a courtesan... I say this because my vision of the life in a better world is one that restores an ancient art to its proper place as an art of persona, of which professional sex is only the foundation and simplest variety (though perfectly honorable). Aspasia and Diotima, whom Socrates and Pericles treated as equals, need to be reborn in a world where social freedom is being recreated. So too do I think it an idea whose time has nearly come for a subtradition of erotic philosophy to compete explicitly again in the free market of ideas. Christianity all but destroyed the vocation of eroticism in the same movement as the closings of the libraries of philosophers and in the same edicts of prohibitions for actors and actresses. As that is the legacy that founded Plymouth and the Progressive Era, I intend to live beside this culture's history.
That said, please understand that as I live in the state of California, I am an 'escort' not a 'prostitute', as an escort sells legally only social companionship and does not engage in 'sex for money'. I am not a 'prostitute' because 'prostitution' is illegal and the title invites one to discover that jail is a sexually transmitted disease. Besides, there is a more substantial difference in concepts; 'escort' has six letters, while 'prostitute' has ten.
I hope my position is clear given the Objectivist conception of the essentials of definition.
anyway, my regards,
and fear imprudence but not offense in asking for truth
Jeanine Ring ))(*)((
* tantra works... and how!; the implications are empiricism's problems, not mine
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