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Sex workers can be and often are the first-line providers of care to the sexual health of men who have sex with men, especially those who don’t identify as gay. The services provided by whores, escorts, and erotic masseurs begin with something that is often underrated in our culture: healing through pleasure. Inside every gay man are traces of a kid who’s been shamed, humiliated, silenced, or terrorized for being queer. For some people, going to a professional for sex is one way to gain permission to experience pleasure in our own bodies, which can be an amazingly powerful healing event.
Sex workers can also serve as providers of information on health matters ranging from safer sex to sexual hygiene. They can be role models of health male sexuality, sexual self-acceptance, and/or gay identity. They can be shame busters and stress-reduction engineers, and more.
These days we have a lot of language to talk about sexual addiction and sexual compulsion. But we don’t talk very much about sexual starvation, erotic malnutrition, and touch deprivation. Being touched is a primary human need. Very few of us get touched as much as we’d like.
-- Don Shewey, “Sex Work as Health Care”
Don and Christopher Smith (connoisseurs
of daddymilk), Boulder, Colorado
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