A client, as I let him out the front door after our booking, says that my body “is like a Kinder Surprise—I had no idea how much was gonna await me under your dress.” Walking back down the hallway, I find the boys at reception trying on new shirts printed with the name of the shop. I ask if I can have one because I think it would be camp and they say they’re for staff. “I’m staff!” I reply, affronted, and they laugh and give me one.
I have been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed having men as my colleagues at this shop. I’ve never worked under men before (well, I have in the most literal sense, but I haven’t had men as my managers or receptionists, both of which act as a liaison between me and the clients, running the adverts, answering the phones and taking the payments).
The industry has been decriminalised in New South Wales since 1995, but brothels and parlours in Australia are largely run by women, partly because historically there were laws against men profiting from the prostitution of women. And also because there’s a path from working girl to madam; when women begin to age out of selling a service with their bodies they transition organically to selling services with other people’s bodies. This can be both because of their knowledge of the industry but also because they may be discriminated against in other industries—their résumés found lacking.
Because of the spectre of the pimp that looms large in all discourse about sex work, I thought that having a gendered dynamic between myself and my management could only be negative. I feared it would heighten the sometimes exploitative and unbalanced relationship I have had with receptionists, who aren’t technically my bosses but behave as if they are. Some receptionists feel entitled to threaten and verbally abuse working girls. Stuck in a grey area between independent contractor and employee, with the added weight of stigma, you’re often left exposed to the worst kind of petty tyrant. Having also worked at places where a distant male boss only popped in occasionally to creep on the new girls, where the woman manager warned us of his impending arrival and tried to steer him away from us, I assumed that any man in the sex industry was automatically out for sex. I thought that they could only be worse than the worst women managers I had experienced.
After working with male management now for two years (in comparison to nine years with women) I can say there are two unexpected benefits to having a male receptionist. Firstly, the clients behave better in the room when the receptionists are men. I had never considered that just as there is a gendered dynamic between clients and workers and workers and reception, so there is between clients and reception. And there is no doubt that clients are loath to be difficult with me when there is the threat of a couple of big men 20 metres down the hallway. Secondly, there is less emotional manipulation from them than I’ve had from women managers. One of the beautiful things about the sex industry is the accelerated intimacy and solidarity that is often fostered in a work environment where all the workers are women; however, some underhand receptionists will use this to pressure you into shifts or clients you don’t want to take on. They play on your sympathies and loyalty, pretending you are part of a family, when at the end of the day you owe a workplace nothing when you have none of the protections of an employee.
None of this is to say that men can’t be bad managers or are better than women—the best managers that I have formed the closest relationships with have all been women. But it is interesting to discover that, in sex work, like with most things, gender tells part of the story, but not all of it. I am grateful to find out that I can have a considerate and professional manager of any gender.
