Sex Works

text VIRGINIA RAND 

35mm film ASHLEY GUO

Parallels between sex, worship and the marketplace span vast ground; intertwined behaviors between the religious institution and merchants; merchants and sex workers; sex workers and preachers; prophets and holymen. While some say that love and God are endless sources, others would say the same about the commodity of the body. In many parts of the world’s marketplaces an individual’s prime resource  is their sex work. This resourcefulness is often associated with the female body, because if it can’t hunt or fight, it can fuck to survive. The individual’s autonomy over their sexuality as a means of economy has acted as both a blueprint and competitor for larger institutions. 

Temples across ancient Greece, Mesopotamia and Central America had sex workers regularly appearing in or outside the temples, offering their goods. ‘Sacred prostitution’ is the academic term referencing these sexual economics, although the latter word is eschewed by some sex educators and workers for its archaic connotations. Debate over such semantics or this specific form of sex work is not the aim here, but rather to consider the abstractions and consistencies between how sexual commodity underlies broadscale industry in both the commercial and religious worlds. 

Millennia of tribalism and trade have culminated in the world today: the global market, lobbyists in Congress, billions of dollars in advertisement, subliminal messages. The notorious term ‘sex sells’ is appreciated, even encouraged, in commercialism and marketing. Institutions which do not promote sex-positivity, such as conservative religions, also benefit from this ethos as they utilize the inversion by targeting inherent sexuality and instilling the  individual’s belief that they themselves are not good enough without feeding off of some larger establishment. 

On exploiting inherent sexual autonomy, sex therapist Lawrence Lanoff says: “If I can turn you against the natural impulses of your own being, I have successfully sexploited you, and therefore I can make you do anything, whether I’m gonna sell you a a religion, a car, or a belief system that will take you to your death.”

These systems of belief and consumerism took the basic methodology to sell sex alongside their establishment, but first undermine the present state of sexuality. ‘Sex sells’ is an industry gold standard. In commercial depictions of sports cars, energy drinks, clothing lines, beauty products, film, television, music; selling sex is acceptable in most mainstream corporations in the western world, until it explicitly refers to the sex industry itself.

Big name brands, deeming themselves ‘family friendly’ and ‘wholesome,’ employ the commercialization of sex commodity in advertising, from the single guy who needs the cool car to get the girl, to when she raises the soda bottle to her lips and makes eye contact with the camera; to the happy couple holding hands and giggling as they walk into their new house with a 30-year mortgage. The sellers need the allure of sexuality underlying the real estate, the products, the industry—like the sacred prostitution on the steps of the ancient temple. 

Tactics of advertising and religion follow a line of instigating sex-based shame in order to exert a need for what they’re selling. Church tithing, original sin, and regulations for sexuality denote an inherent dependency on the institution. The average American church sells other covert forms of sex in the forms of marriage, redemption from impurities, deliverance from evil, or a ticket to heaven. All they ask is for your undying devotion, eternal soul, and tax exemptions.

For both advertising and religious authority, the individual must believe that they, on their own as a physical and spiritual being, are not enough. This is a massive generalization, but among the shades of truth in this statement consider the sex workers outside the ancient temple who were eventually deemed despicable and ostracized. In a monopolized economy, competitors must be eliminated. 

Roughly, the standard sex work business model was effectively stolen by religious institutions and then applied by the modern advertising industry. They all claim: I can make you feel good. Religion and advertising exaggerate the technique by first instigating: you are bad. (Sex workers might tell you the same thing, but as part of the transaction rather than the advertisement. In other words, they’ll tell you that you’re very bad*, if you like that.) *It might cost extra.

Autonomous sexual beings, those who do not rely on an authoritarian mode of worship or a fast car to get pussy, are threats to these establishments.

Sex panic has been conflated with consumerism and employed by religious institutions and commercial advertising alike. The global marketplace can be observed, perhaps in its own story, as comparable to the most widespread forms of worship in today’s world, central to the core belief systems and gratification of average people dictating desirability. To free ourselves of this conditioning involves intense spiritual seeking of our sexual selves. Our desires have been redirected to financially benefit corporations and churches, yet mainstream beliefs and businesses still consider sex workers as base members of society.

Arriving here is not the product of some massive, ancient conspiracy, in Lanoff’s opinion. The conflict of an individual’s sexuality is broad-scale and affected by a plethora of environmental, psychological, biological and inherited neuroses or inner crises. “From the moment of our birth we are put in conflict with ourselves. If you’re in constant conflict with yourself, fundamentally you’re super-easy to control.”

Whether this was a conscious exploitation by the religious and merchandising establishments can’t be determined as some pivotal point of exchange between those working within the temple and those working on its steps. Those who wear the business suits and the clergy garb are likely victims of sexual exploitation and conditioning themselves. Nonetheless, the hypocrisy is blatant.

Sex work by the individual is condemned, yet sex work by the institution is sanctioned. 

Personal satisfaction is the ultimate enemy to the market. If you have a sense of completion, you stop purchasing. If you sense God deeply within yourself, you lack the fervency to turn to the religious institution which strikes fear into us. As far as business models go, it seems the religious and commercial establishment have no problem stealing the methodology with one hand while pointing the finger with the other, knowing perfectly well that when they want to sell a product, sex works.