This week, OG show host Paulita Pappel stops by to host the show!
From pre-social media stripping on the East Coast, working as a dominatrix in a dungeon in San Francisco, all the way to Berlin feminist porn scene and beyond SESTA-FOSTA, Sadie Lune has a unique career as a sex worker, and a lot to teach us.
Sadie Lune is an artist, whore, performer and parent based in Berlin. You can find her at sadielune.com, on Twitter and Instagram.
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Podcast Transcript:
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Aria Vega [00:00:00] This podcast contains explicit content, listeners discretion is advised.
Paulita Pappel POV by Lustery explores culture, politics and creativity in the sex industry. One point of view at a time I'm your host, Paulita Pappel.
Paulita Pappel Sadie Lune is a middle aged white American, genderqueer femme artist, whore, performer and parent living in Berlin. I've known Sadie for over a decade, and in this conversation, I told her for the first time that listening to her orgasm in porn, which for those of you listeners who don't know she does very loudly, helped me become louder and discover more pleasure by taking up more space for my own orgasms. As we're celebrating sex work November at POV, for this special episode, I wanted to learn more about Sadie, so we talked about her whole career from pre-social media stripping in the East Coast, through San Francisco's feminist dungeon to after SESTA-FOSTA parenting and ageing as a sex worker in Berlin. But first things first:
Sadie Lune [00:01:07] OK? How did I get into sex work? It starts with being fascinated with sex work from childhood, and also part of that fascination includes not completely believing in it. Because, of course, as a kid, sex work from what I understood to be was mostly around prostitution. Prostitution was illegal and bad, and therefore very improbable to exist in real life, because how could it function if you were just going to get arrested right away, which is how I understood the law to work. So that's kind of where I grew up out of. At the same time, I was super fascinated with every character portrayal of sex work in movies, books, films - the whores always had, they were always my favorite. They were like the ones that I kind of like, caught my breath and looked out for and looked up to and felt like admiration and awe and fascination and some sort of relationality to. And at one point around puberty, I was definitely I had this fantasy about becoming a sex worker when I was an adult. I had this very specific vision that I drew a picture of, also called Chay Cecille. And it was basically kind of like art nouveau fin de siecle, French style brothel where, like I and all my friends worked and we hung out in fancy lacy lingerie and velvet sets and chaise lounges, and men would come in and then they'd go, for the drawing that I drew. There's like no clientele. It's just me and my friends hang out being sexy, lounging on velvet and spending time with each other. It was like, you know, projecting my esthetic fetishes and my like burgeoning queer sexuality that I didn't realize. And it was also very like sisterhood base. You know, it was like about us as a collective in my mind, it was very much about kind of like the power and autonomy. Of course, I didn't think of it that way. But of the fact that men wanted our services and had money to pay. But they were just kind of like a means to an end. And it was really about us spending time together in this like elaborate and decadent context and physical world and helping and being with each other.
Paulita Pappel So, how do you go from this fantasy to actual sex work?
Sadie Lune [00:04:01] Yeah. So my point was just to say that, like my mind was prepped. It wasn't like I just was like, Oh my God, what's happening in here? OK, I guess I'll put a dick in my mouth. It was like I was working with these themes internally for years through child and adolescent childhood and adolescence. And then when I got a bit older, I absorbed a lot of the stigma and also like legal fear and just very black and white morality of my class and race background, which was upper middle class white privilege sheltered of the eighties and nineties and an East Coast American. And I was like, Oh no, that's like wrong, like prostitution is wrong, etc., etc. But I'm still somehow intrigued. And it wasn't just that it was wrong. Like the main thing that I understood, because I also grew up definitely very influenced by second wave feminism. It was that it was exploitative and that it was, you know, the path to ruination for women. But I basically got to this point where I was super curious about everything to do with sex, and I had this kind of like distanced perspective where there was one thing to have sexual feelings and fetishes and fantasies and things that I liked and whatever. And there was just this whole other part where I was just like, How does that work? What's that like? I wonder how that is. Oh, that sounds interesting. Like even if it's not particularly my thing or like a path to like direct arousal, at least for me. And I was always an outsider. Like, I was always alienated and feeling like I was living on the fringe within any kind of social circle, a lot of that has to do with my mental health, but it also just has to do with my weird personality and including like more out there thoughts than mainstream normative stuff. And so like I was, I was attracted to things that were kind of like risky or edgy or not well understood or like not everybody's into it, you know, like that felt like where I always had been and where I probably belonged.
Paulita Pappel While struggling with normative ideals of beauty as a teenager after being kicked out of college related to depression, Sadie was at the Baltimore Pride. Happy to be surrounded by queers, and still feeling like an outsider when she got introduced to a very hot girl who was really goth and smoking clove cigarets by herself on the hill. Turns out she was a stripper.
Sadie Lune [00:06:33] And so I literally just met her, went into her club and got a job that night and started working. I was working as a stripper off and on for four years and some different clubs. For me at that place and time, it was pretty rough. Basically, starting as a new girl, you know, you were lucky if there was someone who would kind of like, tell you some of the ropes or show you show you what's up because basically you would get a like very quick and perfunctory tour by the bartender or the manager. And then a lot of my colleagues took in new people as competition. And so you either kind of had to like, prove yourself with them or be in an ongoing battle or not be competition and just be a weirdo who didn't make that much money, which was my path.
Paulita Pappel And then from there you went to San Francisco.
Sadie Lune [00:07:32] Yeah, well, so before I went to San Francisco, I started working in massage parlors and then we'll just the one massage parlor. And then I started working as an escort. So like doing full service sessions, meaning actual fucking. So like between nineteen and twenty three, I was like stripping, giving handjobs at the massage parlor started working for an escort agency. Then I went to San Francisco, I moved to San Francisco and the first half year or a year, I was mostly doing Craigslist sex work, odd jobs where people were like, Let me jerk off while you show me your tits in the car for 15 minutes, 50 bucks, and I'm like, OK, let's go. You know, come to my warehouse studio film archive, live work space and piss on my feet. 50 bucks, OK.
Paulita Pappel Craigslist, such good times. I remember!
Sadie Lune [00:08:26] Yeah, it was such a open world of negotiation is a lot of what it was like. This is my specific thing that I have to offer. Like, Who's my audience? Oh, there you are. This is my specific thing that I want. OK, like you, people can manage that. Great. You know? Yeah, Craigslist so many.
Paulita Pappel So this is a time before social media.
Sadie Lune [00:08:49] Oh my god. Yes, right? Yeah. I mean, I moved to San Francisco in two thousand three, so
Paulita Pappel Online sex work was mostly Craigslist.
Sadie Lune [00:08:56] Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, when I started working at the escort agency still on the East Coast, what I learned were there were these they call them boards, which were basically websites, review boards where like clients, punters, Johns, whatever you want to call them, like the people who are clientele would rate sex workers. And they had message boards about like, Oh, I saw Sherry, you know, for a BBJ, she has hot tits but wanted me to wear a condom and that's not BB or like whatever, you know? And so I give her a three or something like this like, so it was coming into it from the full service side was basically coming into a world of like, pretty intense and explicit Yelp review by a lot of men who didn't necessarily see or write about us as people. But we're like liking their perspective was they were trying to protect themselves and each other from fakes and scammers. So, you know, people where there's going to be a guy there who's going to threaten you, you're going to get ripped off, you're going to get, you know, your money stolen and whatever any gray or black market business is definitely a place for con artists and predators to like live. It's not that there aren't scams within the world of sex work.
Paulita Pappel That's so interesting because every time I think about like the screening, I'm thinking about screening clients. Of course, but not exactly the other way around.
Sadie Lune [00:10:33] That's the thing. A lot of clientele are terrified. They see us as the bad guy. The criminal element like we are vectors of disease. We are people who. You know, might rob them, we might hurt them, we might spread their private information like they are very afraid of, you know, their lives potentially being ruined by sex workers. And so they are looking for safe, discreet, reliable, trustworthy people. And, you know, sex workers were like, Oh, how about we don't get murdered or get raped by someone who turns out to be a cop? So, I mean, that's part of what criminalization does is it's like instead of providing a context where like we as workers and clients, as consumers can kind of be in concert with each other of like, OK, we're trying to make a deal happen, how like how do we get ourselves from point A to point B and have a mutually enjoyable experience and our expectations satisfied? It's like, Oh my God, you're going to fuck me up. Oh my God, you're going to fuck me up, like each of us has in mind the fact that we are prey. And very easily potentially victimized because of our positionality, except for the people who are inherently predators
Paulita Pappel and who take advantage, obviously, of exactly that situation.
Sadie Lune [00:12:05] So anyway, there were these review boards, but that was also how workers and agencies did a lot of their advertising. You would like write a little blurb, there might be a little thumbnail photo or there might be a link to a website. And my madam had a had a website and she had photos of us.
Paulita Pappel And you said your madam? Well, how do you find your madam?
Sadie Lune [00:12:29] I really wanted to go into prostitution at this point, and I really wanted to make that transition. But I wanted to work for a female owned agency, and I didn't want to be independent because I didn't know what I was doing. And I was like, That is scary. And I want to work for like a woman who has experience but will also do things like screening and stuff like that for me that there's some level of protection. And I found this agency that was hiring, not in my town, but close enough, and I met the woman and she seemed good enough. And then I started. I started working for her. And the coolest thing that this person did because, you know, I come to find out like the screening protection. All of that is pretty shady and not necessarily what I was imagining or like hoped to get out of out of this arrangement. But the coolest thing that she did was my official first client. She was like, OK, you're going to meet this guy. He'll come knock on the door, let him in. He's my old friend. He used to be my client. We've been friends for like a million years and he's not going to pay you. I'm going to pay you after, but he's going to talk you through how it goes. So she sent like one of her best old clients, and they worked out this deal where like every time she got a new girl, he would get a free session that she did pay for to be like the like the demo model, like the hands on experiential teacher of like how to run a session and how it should go. So he, like, came to the door and he was like, Hey, and he was like, OK, first thing you do is you're like, Hey, lots of people like to give a hug. Like, he talked through it the whole time. And so then I like, give him a hug. And he was like. And then you asked for the envelope. People say business before pleasure. People will say, Do you have something for me? And then he was like, Yeah, then you sit on the couch, there's like a time of chit chat. They say usually it's like eleven and a half minutes, but you know, you can vary it. Just make sure you know there's at least half an hour like in the bed per hour. And he just like ran me through all the things and we had sex like we fucked. And he was like, nice about it, but gave me a couple suggestions. It was something like a little more time with the foreplay or like, maybe start slower here, you know, something like that. But yeah, it was awesome.
Paulita Pappel It sounds really good.
Sadie Lune [00:15:02] It was awesome. Like, I wish all sex work was like that because at least in America, like people are afraid to tell you anything. I worked at four different strip clubs. I worked at a massage parlor like I work at places filled with women in the same position as me. And it was so rare to find anyone who was just willing to be like, straightforward, kind and respectful from the beginning of like, Hey, let me show you how it works here. And that is so much the result of the internalized shame, stigma and whorephobia of the workers kind of the like. Well, we had to learn the hard way. So why should it be any different for you? You know. As well as like financial competition, which, you know, usually the management like to kind of like encourage or egg that on a bit as long as it curbs too much drama because the more people were focused on making money, the more money they got combined with the fear of legal risk. And the truth of sex work is, in most cases, in most places, at least where it's illegal or marginally legal. You're just thrown in and you have to figure it all out as you go. And it's terrifying, humiliating a very good set up for you to cross your own boundaries. And just like, yeah, unnecessary.
Paulita Pappel Talking about boundaries. I asked Sadie, what were the safer sex protocols back then?
Sadie Lune [00:16:36] On the East Coast when I started? Condoms were pretty standard for penis - vagina intercourse or anal, but I didn't do that. I didn't offer that. But some people you could be negotiated out of. Some people were known for. That's not required. Very rare for blowjobs. And then like gloves? No, that didn't exist. I mean, in the East Coast, I was trying to figure out how to use lube. Like I was like secretly lubing up before the client got to the door because I didn't know how to just incorporate that. And then I would end up getting yeast infections and whatever, whatever. Probably my lube was shitty because I didn't know yet. And also I was like, basically, I was trying to stay wet like my whole working day so that at any point, like I didn't have to reach for a bottle in front of them. When I moved to San Francisco, that all changed, and I had already established basically through my non monogamous relationship that for me, like safer sex usage, HIV crisis and some sort of like respectfull intentional non-monogamy were very interrelated. And so that actually, like my safer sex standard actually came more from that than from sex work to start from. And it was basically like, OK, the least I can do is not give my beloved partner an STI, if possible, if I'm going to be like a slut all around. So I work that all out through San Francisco. I mean, I was this was like a whole process, this whole the whole time frame of like deep sexual learning and investigation. I became familiar with like the kink community in Baltimore. And then when I moved to San Francisco, I had always wanted to be a dominatrix and my madam tried to convince me to, like, offer domination sessions. She was like, You would make so much money. And I was like, But I don't know how, but I must be trained first because I was like a by the book. You know, I was very scared that I was going to like, fuck somebody up and be a bad dominatrix. But when I moved to San Francisco, there was a dungeon that had like a lot of on the job Skillshare. That was perfect for me. Also, like not enough clientele, not enough money being made, but I learned so much. So this was just like a much more kind of like free love, hippie informed sex positive feminist like, you know, it was like it had different legacies of San Francisco ideology overlapped on to each other within this one dungeon space. And so that's where I learned a lot of like the BDSM skills that made me feel comfortable to be like, OK, yes, I am a dominatrix. Even if it was like literally ten minutes before the appointment with, you know, one of my colleagues being like. OK. Synder lie on the ground, we're momifying you! That's how you do it. The important part is this in this, you know, like and I was like, OK, and they're like, Go!
Paulita Pappel So how were you advertising at the time?
Sadie Lune [00:19:42] So when I worked for the agency on the East Coast, she handled the advertising, but it was mostly through the review boards. When I moved to San Francisco, at first I was like mostly responding to ads from Craigslist in the sex worker ad jobs. Then I started working at the dungeon and the dungeon did its own advertising and they did it on Craigslist, some like domination specific print material. I mean, I remember when I started stripping and was thinking about going into prostitution, like one of the barriers for me was then you had to take an ad out in the back in the newspaper. Yeah. And I couldn't imagine like paying to take my own ad out in the thing of it, just like the management admin aspect. I have never gotten good at that. That's always been part of my barrier with sex work, any other part of life. So I like working at the dungeon where they advertise for you.
Paulita Pappel Did you ever get to get your own website and advertise through social media, so how was that transition?
Sadie Lune [00:20:46] Yeah, I worked at the Dungeon for about a year and then I went independent. There was this this website called Red Book it was great because as a worker, you could put up a free profile and that was a way for clients to find you. There were like different levels of being completely free to paying some hundreds a month or whatever, depending on how much you wanted to specify your kind of advertising and admin experience.
Paulita Pappel Since the internet became part of our lives, a lot of sex work moved online, making it easier for sex workers to find their clients, screen them and literally just providing for safer and fairer working conditions. Two thousand eighteen a law passes in the US that would change the status quo: SESTA-FOSTA, the allow states and victims to fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act. This law was allegedly designed to fight sex trafficking, but the law doesn't punish traffickers. It does threaten legitimate online speech by making platforms liable for the content that is posted by their users. As a result, online platforms must face an awful decision. Risk severe civil and criminal penalties for the activities of their users or restrict their user's speech, silencing a lot of marginalized voices in the process. Since Congress passed SESTA-FOSTA, owners of popular online platforms have responded by censoring completely lawful activity from their sites. Other sites hosting lawful activity have shut down entirely. I asked Sadie what had been the real impact of this law for sex workers?
Sadie Lune [00:22:34] A number of major websites just disappeared. A number of marketplace web sites like Craigslist, for example, they just completely crashed whole categories. Anything in the line of sex work industry at every other point in history, any jurisdiction only has legal purview over the area that it's in charge of. However, never before has one country decided a law that actually affects and implicates people completely globally because people lost the only platform that they had to connect with their clients, regardless of whatever the laws or ways in which they were doing work were in their particular location. So, for example, I have friends in Australia, and some of them work in New Queensland, which is one of the few places in the world that's actively been using decriminalization. So these are sex workers that some might say are working in kind of the most idyllic conditions currently available globally because they're working under the model that most sex workers rights activists are asking for or, like are saying, is the best model we have as of now. And these people lost their jobs. They lost all access to working because like if you imagine something like Facebook, where it's not just where you put out your messages and your posts. So that would be like the advertising. It's also where all your contacts are. So that would be potentially your whole client black book. Then I was back visiting San Francisco about, let's say, half a year ish after SESTA-FOSTA got passed and I ran into somebody I recognized who was a worker at the St James Infirmary, which is the occupational health and safety free medical clinic for sex workers, their partners and their children in San Francisco. And that's where I, as an uninsured person, got basically all of my health care for a decade of my life, and they were talking about how one of their roles was maybe there were outreach coordinator or they were doing outreach. And so basically it was like one day a week where they make these outreach kits that have maybe like condoms, lube or like disposable toothbrush, like a mini deodorant. Some like safety and hygiene elements and basically within, I think like a week and a half of SESTA-FOSTA passing all of like the regular stops where there tend to be concentrations of sex workers working off of the streets. It was suddenly triple the number of people they were used to, and they were like, Whoa, where are you coming from? And they were like, we were advertising online, but we don't know where to do that anymore. So like rents due now, we're on the stroll, you know? And then like a more wide reaching effect even than that, if it's not enough to like, affect literally millions of sex workers around the world is that this is the groundwork of what is informing the terms and services of companies like Facebook and Instagram, which are the same now, and Twitter, et cetera, et cetera, around what is OK to show or say. And so all of the increased policing by websites of their own users around nipples, butts, genitals, nudity, queer stuff, trans stuff, people of color, activism, solidarity, any words having to do with sex positivity, which often is overlapping also, of course, into like queer communities, communities where sexuality is a topic of activism like disabled folks and also just people of color because they tend to be hit worse by everything that's that's, you know, like made from the legal system. This is what is shutting people's accounts down. This is what is censoring you, me and everyone we know. So if you get a threat that your account might be suspended or deleted because your bathing suit photo at the beach like was a violation of the terms of use or whatever, this actually is a direct result of SESTA and FOSTA, and not only is that an an annoyance to like the whole world, but that is directing again the income, as well as the ability to connect and stay connected between various marginalized communities that often are locationally remote from each other. There's been at least a few very important studies and reports about how sex workers who are able to work in community with each other, especially without fearing worse legal consequences for being working with each other, have much better physical and mental health outcomes than sex workers that are isolated or can't communicate about the kind of like why, how and when to do the job. And even for what I like me, I have come to understand that virtual space is a real space. It's the same in physical space as far as who's allowed, who's allowed to be heard. How much of the mainstream space or like the secret pocket of space are we allowed? And what's visible and not visible and who controls that? Because it actually all has similar, if not the same kind of emotional effects in our lives of how we perceive ourselves and in relation to the greater world.
Paulita Pappel After living in San Francisco for many years, Sadie moved to Berlin. I asked her what was her main motivation for taking this decision?
Sadie Lune [00:29:07] There were a lot of factors to why I made that move, but a huge one was fear. Fear of being an out and vocal sex worker and sex workers rights proponent in the US, coming into parenthood terrified me. Since I was a child, I knew I wanted kids. It was one of my big life dreams, and four years before I got pregnant, I was thinking about how unsafe and scary the position of being a sex worker who is a parent is in the US because for the most part, most of the United States like prostitution is just illegal. That means that, you know, some professional domination. Professional submission is kind of legal, maybe legal. Blah blah strippers are legal as long as they don't do extras. Porn stars are ironically some of the most legally protected sex workers. But I was like a full service whore and dominatrix, and I performed in porn and I was really vocal about it, and it wasn't like I was known, like I was very vocal who was listening. Not that many people. So that wasn't scary, but it was just like if you decided to just look at the websites of sex workers in a certain place and start picking people off the list and, you know, investigating what their deal is like, I was not hard to find in that way. And in public, I was often speaking up and out about basically presenting myself as like one of the faces of sex work so people could humanize this often very distanced and dehumanized identity and job. And I was just like plagued by fear of the power of the CPS, which is the Child Protective Services. I was so terrified of what could happen to a family that I don't even have yet because of stories I have heard, people that I knew, things that aren't even sex work like basically, once it comes down to your own legal position is fragile enough that the values, opinions and almost like the ideological trend of whatever moment you're in can completely determine whether your whole life is ruined or whether it's not that big of a deal like that is not an OK position to be in as far as when it comes to your kids or your your family or, you know. I mean, it's not a great position to be in as an individual about yourself, but that's a different that's a different thing. And me, as a 23 year old thinking about getting arrested is like, well, that would be scary and alarming. But the the threat of a state agency taking my kids away, it was not OK, like it was really my worst nightmare. And so that was a big reason for me to move to a completely different continent during pregnancy. Because so much felt precarious.
Paulita Pappel Being a sex worker in Germany is not dreamland. You know, there's still stigma and German bureaucracy, cold winters and dysfunctional communities, but Sadie felt safer here to live, work and start a family. I asked her how it is like for her to age as a sex worker.
Sadie Lune [00:32:50] I think that sex workers 40 and over particularly are fucking awesome and tough and very impressive people in general. I think that ageing as a femme woman, type person or perceived woman type person in society for the most part, is not easy. And if you're a sex worker, it's kind of just more clearly exacerbated. And I'll say that I think as a person who does in-person sessions, it's actually a hundred times easier, a thousand times easier than as a person who performs in porn. Depending on your financial and kind of like emotional health situation with in-person sessions, I don't want to say always because, you know, some people like to say, like, there's always a client base for anyone, and that might not exactly be true. Or maybe it is true, but it's not necessarily true that there's always a big enough client base right now where you are to sustain you as a sex worker as like the root of all your income. That might not always be true. But there are clients out there for older folks, for older women. It's funny. I say older and I mean middle age. But when you're just having one on one sessions, it's really much more about marketing for your client base so that they can find you. So as long as you're willing to kind of like lean into whatever the current nomenclature and hashtags and keywords and manage hooking into at least a bit of that so that you can find your your client base, you know, they exist, and sometimes it can be really lovely and gratifying and actually quite validating. The trick is making the switch between this kind of client base to that kind of client base, and there can definitely be senses of loss around beauty or identity, potentially loss of income, etc., etc. And all of that includes the sense of the loss of power, you know, to go from one position where potentially you don't feel very empowered, but you kind of know how it works and know what to expect and know how to run it and know where you stand with people to then transition to another position where you're like, Oh, I didn't notice any of the power because there was so many other elements where I was not in the position of power in that position. But compared to this position, that was the good times, you know, so that can be rough. But if you're lucky, you can also find lovely clients who really appreciate your body and your experience, your approach, your relatability, your potential sense of emotional safety, like the things that tend to come with ageing. With porn, whoa, boy, it is a different ball game because the thing about porn is whatever you look like in photos and in advertising that you do, depending on if you show your face or you don't what you wear, what you don't when you're in a one on one session with a client, it's all about seduction, comfort, skill of leading people through quick intimacy and emotional sense of safety, but also excitement. It's all of these social personality skills that have to do with touch, eye contact, body language, what you wear, the setting of the room, all of this stuff. It's all the information that your clients are receiving. And at a certain point, what you look like doesn't matter because of what they think you look like is all about what all that other stuff says. So you might truly be the most perfectly beautiful person they've ever met ever, because you know how to listen and make eye contact and also help them get to places that you know no one's ever guided them to before. When you're in porn, the information they get is what you look and sound like flattened out on a screen. And the porn industry is notoriously prejudiced. Is that the way to say what I mean to say? Not only does it make very, very hot, take categories the basis of how the casting goes and how pornographers are thinking about what seems to do or how to cast people with each other, et cetera, et cetera. It's how it's sold, it's how it's marketed and the Big P porn industry meaning, you know, mass market commercial porn is like, definitely agist, but it also uses a as one of like the any kind of modular elements of like, let's hit a fetish, let's hit a weirdness. Let's hit a you never saw this before. Like, can we get a neuron in there that's going to make you click basically. And that can be like bizarre. That can be like, it's disgusting, don't you want to see? So that means it's agist. However, there's a there's a little little space there, a little space there for milf, gilf, grandma gangbang, whatever. You know, it doesn't mean it's like enough to really base many careers on it, but it's kind of like, you know, there are some ways you can work at least a few gigs and here and there. The queer and feminist porn world that I've worked in, in the states and in Europe, I think is quite agist without knowing that it is. And I think that it is because feminism is such a big core of the politic that a lot of the people are working with. And I will say feminisms because they're very, very, very different interpretations and like, like specific beliefs within the umbrella term of feminists, but some sort of gender expansiveness, equity parity, things that don't look or sound like sexual exploitation. But people do really care about the porn that they're making and the representation they're in, expansion of representation as like a baseline, like intersectional and as as many ways as possible. But that doesn't mean that every marginality is equally represented. And that's fair. Like, every marginality is not equally represented in the world and not every marginality lends itself to people feeling comfortable or empowered enough to want to be in porn about it. However, I feel like in general our world is looking a lot at race, a lot at gender, a lot at sexual, you know, fringe or deviant sexuality, BDSM kink, fetishes, role plays, etc.. We're not looking so much, at least in Europe, this is and this is a difference with America, with fatness, class is question mark? Age is almost, I feel like approached as a bit of an afterthought slash, not approached at all. Most of the folks, I think, are not thinking about it are not realizing that that's like another space of power and visibility, invisibility, representation and all of these things. But I know that I'm getting a lot less work. I can say that and it's interesting. I had a talk with another former sex worker, sex world figure who's a generation older than me, late 50s or 60s or something like that. And she was like, Yeah, it's interesting to notice when suddenly all of the offers are for you to talk about sex work, but there aren't any more for you to actually do the sex work.
Paulita Pappel Point taken! As much as I love listening to Sadie talk, I'd also like to see more of her on the screen. So here's a call to all porn makers out there, including myself, to book Sadie soon in a production. I've learned so much from sex workers all my life before and after becoming one. I'm so full of gratitude and admiration. I asked Sadie what she thought was one important thing that sex workers can teach the rest of society.
Sadie Lune [00:42:19] One is negotiation around consent and boundaries and stating your desires or knowing how to ask the right questions from people to get to the information that you want, or whether it's, you know, in porn where, like, there's something very beautiful about the like knowing efficiency between two seasoned porn performers where they don't need any outside agency to kind of like be like. And now we're going to have the time for negotiation 'kids, you know, it's like, All right, we're here. We know the deal. We know the general things. Your yes'es, your no's, your maybes. What are you feeling today? What's the vibe? OK, good to go. And within that is like consent, pleasure, insecurities, places where we know we can shine, current emotional state, but also where and how that's flexible and can be transferred into something totally else for the scene. And it can be really pleasurable. So I think sex workers in general learn how to be very effective, skillful, concerned negotiators on emotional, physical, sexual and financial levels. Not not necessarily all of those places, you know, we all have our our our strong points. But the second answer that came to my head was how to deal with annoying people without kind of letting on how annoying you find them. Not that it's not annoying and you feel it, but like, you're like, I'm going to run with my groove man and you will jump on as much as you're able. And I think that goes across a lot of areas of sex work. And the reason that I think that this is an important skill that people in general could learn as I feel in general in our culture right now we're coming to this major point of very intense reckoning with a very intense emotional psychological power based on historical truth and realities. And that's bringing up so much pain and so much anger. And all of this is like a very, very important step in a process of hopefully potentially us developing and maturing and seeing each other better as humans. But I don't think we can get to that potentially hopeful, more beautiful place with each other, if we don't also keep some remnants, such as sometimes we're going to get on to others fuckin nerves, and it doesn't have to be that that's the end of the conversation. Or that's the end of the person or that's the end of the career or whatever or whatever. We all have our days and we all have our personalities and not all of those personalities or belief systems or values or just like behavior of the moment should or can slide smoothly like a well lubed finger up a juicy, ripe ass. Like, it's just not how it is to be human. And part of what it is to be human is to be able to also tolerate from each other things that rub us the wrong way. But still below the level of you've hit a hard boundary or that's a point of trauma, or this is the pain I can endure, like basically just to tolerate some amount of unpleasantness and discomfort with each other without it fuckin ruining everybody's day.
Paulita Pappel That was, Sadie Lune. Artist, whore, performer and parent. She's available for work as an intimacy consultant for media, public speaker, performer for stage and film, sexuality and kink coach, workshop facilitator and interdisciplinary artist. For all of this and more, you can visit her website, Sadielune dot com. Follow her on Twitter at SadieLune and on Instagram at Sadie_Lune. It was fun being back as your host, listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're into this show, please leave us a five star rating and a review. POV is brought to you by Lustery, and this episode was hosted by me, Paulita Pappel. It was edited and produced by Kathryn Fisher and Adrienne Teicher. Lustery is the home of real life partners filming their sex lives behind closed doors. If you're 18 or older, you can find us at Lustery dot com and we're on Twitter and Instagram @lusteryPOV