94. Unsane

Whore Feminism, Agency, and Philosophy at the Dinner Table

The other day, over dinner with my adult children, I was confronted by my own philosophy. A moment when philosophy becomes real life.

As a woman I believe that one of the most empowering and empowered things is to ask people to pay for access to your body. Whore Feminism is more than just an incidental stance. It is a foundational philosophy. Ontological. It is not just the core of my being; it is who I am. My nature, the very essence of being.

And when that happens, if you are to be true to yourself, then you reorganise the world around you to fit that model. I would like to propose the three ways people navigate reality. Sane, insane and unsane. These are not clinical definitions, but ones which describe the nuance of the lived world.

• Sane: a state where an individual adjusts their internal beliefs and perceptions to align with objective, external facts and evidence;

• Insane: a state where an individual believes their internal beliefs inherently are external reality, disregarding contradictory evidence;

• Unsane: a conscious act of deliberately manipulating or shaping the external world to match personal desires and inner will, rather than conforming to it or denying its existence. Unsane is about the exercise of agency as primordial.

These are not terms from the world of scholarly or even pop psychology, so I can hear some of you shrieking. The person who shared this with me also had an agenda, to which I do not ascribe, but generally agree that to be unsane is the healthiest of the three.

We might collectively agree that it’s good to be sane and not good to be insane, but I am not sure that a value judgement in either case is appropriate. In a way, it feels as if being sane is more than normal, it just is. A kind of default that comes along with circuitry and is the universe’s form of giving us all a user manual. Insane is a flawed instruction set, someone writing precise instructions in a language they only half speak.

Unsane presents more moral ambiguity. We can name a contemporary political figure whose will-to-shape exceeds his ethical circuitry. Indeed our current world offers several examples. Sometimes people with hard-to-stomach views end up in my arms, and yet, I find myself able to contain us both. And a part of this has to do with what draws me to this work, and the potential for the erotic to create a sympathetic reaction in my partner. And I mean the wiring of our belief systems.

My intentionally naïve view is that people are fundamentally good, but sometimes they cannot see it, live it, act on it, because they cannot go back to core. Perhaps it is scary, or self-described ugly. My role is to walk there hand in hand and observe, feel, but not judge. Using that which is sexual is simply a way to gain access.

Leaving that plum dangling…the issue with any number of toxic political leaders’ version of unsanity has nothing to do with agency but rather arrogance, narcissism, whatever it is where the “do no harm” circuity got fucked up. But just as there are unsane examples in the deficit column, history has shown us others who have dared to imagine a better world.

In other words, unsanity is morally neutral; it produces both reckless tyrants and architects of new social contracts. The definition holds.

Collectively we adore the unsane. These are the visionaries, the ones who remake the world to an image that only they can see. Marie Curie saw that radiation could be therapeutic and not just harmful (and remains the only person to have ever won two Nobel Prizes). Rosalind Franklin, remember that name, whose work discovered the double-helix structure of DNA (not the men who stole her ideas and have popular credit). They were both demonstrably unsane.

Over dinner, one of my adult children, yes, prostitutes do have children, and yes, we also have sit-down meals together, opened an awkward, funny, instructive conversation. To be clear, my children are adults and have been adults for the entire time they have known about what I do.

“I booked an escort. It was fun.”

“What? When?”

“Last week.”

“Oh my God.”

“Who?” that’s my first question? Because, shucks, we tend to know each other.

“I bet I can guess,” said another one of my adult children.

“What?”

“How did you find her?”

“Tryst.”

“I’m on that platform.”

“But not in my city.”

“Yes, I am. I tour in your city. Its just a matter of time before you see my ad.”

“Oh my,” it was their turn to express surprise.

“Well, we always said this would happen sooner or later.”

“Can’t you go on a different platform. Tryst makes it so easy.”

“Unfortunately, no, it’s one of my best sources of business.”

I quickly pulled out my phone and checked my ad. I have a scheduled tour to their town coming up and wanted to see if I was showing up in the results yet. Thankfully no. But it made me think carefully about each of the photos I have on my profile and which ones I wouldn’t want them to see or their friends to see.

As while I can count on them not wanting to click through and see me, their friends would likely have a morbid curiosity. It reminds of how one of my closest friends in college, a guy, used to say how fuckable my mother was. It is remarkable that we stayed friends, but how refreshing I found his unfettered self-expression was greater than my discomfort at his occasional saying of things you just don’t say.

My kids have known I am an escort for as long as I have been one and were adults when I became one. We don’t keep secrets from one another. And they have seen me coming home from appointments or going to them. Have even travelled with me on tour when we wanted to spend time together, but there was someone “I needed to see,” whilst we were there.

I make no secret of loving travel bookings more than any other (the Fly Me To You or Fly You To Me). There is something powerful and ritual about travel, both for me and for the person who sees me. Travel removes habit, and this is a powerful unlocking mechanism. Entry into the sacred space of what I do is begun the moment you step out your door with the intention of spending time with a companion.

It is a shame, a wasted opportunity, to not bring intention to every interaction, every conscious act of doing. In a way that is what magic is.

You might ask yourself what does a parent talk about when their children reveal that they like to see escorts. Our conversation was about manners, respect, agency, consent, boundaries. We also talked about falling in love, and how important it was to recognise that escorts are perhaps the best in the world at making you want them, but that is the art, short for artifice, and only the fool believes that it will be different.

It is the fool, however, who changes the world. In Tarot, it is the first card and can be the most powerful. For good and bad.

The lesson I wanted for my children was about being intentional with an escort, making her not just feel safe, but be safe, and going out of their way to be respectful and kind. Whether they do it out of self-interest or do it because they discover that when you treat people with reverence and care, you learn lessons applicable to all of life. And what we learn at our most receptive, as our heads lay on the pillow in a cloud of post-coital bliss, is what rewires us, motivates us, shapes who we are.

This is a moral dilemma. Not because of sex but because of power. What I wanted is for my children to respect my sisters. I do not doubt their own respect for me. Here, they have a chance to prove it, when it has nothing to do with me.

My choice to be an escort is central to my identity and to the exercise of agency. A man’s choice to be respectful is just as strong a statement of identity. Outside of whoring, my vanilla life is simply an acceptable version of the same, I stand with women and train men for not just a future world centred on women, but to make that world now. Am I unsane? You bet I am.

About MxValentina

Mx Valentina is a writer, parent, citizen, feminist, matriarch, dominatrix and companion. She writes about power, agency, consent, containment, and intentional exchange. She works with men and women seeking depth, structure, and transformation. You can find her at MxValentina.com.