Why sex work is a therapeutic service
Iwould like to open by saying that as a cis, white female, it’s important for me to acknowledge the privilege I have as a sex worker. I feel honoured to work in this industry and I have the utmost respect for those who pioneered this craft. I will never know or understand the experiences of other workers, and can only attest to my own.
I’ve been working in the industry for over a decade, and my sex work resume encompasses many different forms. This privilege is compounded by the fact that I also work within the confines of a regulated and safe environment where management, security, and coworkers offer an incredible amount of support.
I’m a stripper—but what if I told you that on top of getting naked and dancing on stage for money, a lot of my income from the club comes from providing emotional support to my clients?
According to a 2020 survey conducted by the Government of Canada, Canadian women are 30 per cent more likely than men to use health services for mental illness. In my experience, for every handful of men who come in looking for a lap dance, there’s another one who comes in looking for talk therapy.
Stigma around seeking therapy is still pervasive—especially in the boomer generation, which happens to be a large part of our clientele. Cap this off with pressures to conform to societal norms and traditional masculine gender roles, and voila: these individuals find their way into our chairs rather than those of mental health professionals.
I’ve had men take me into VIP rooms and ask me to not take my clothes off, but rather to hold them. I’ve had men ask me to slow dance with them, to listen to them vent about their marital issues, and for advice on how to get their wives back. I’ve even had people confide in me in regards to suicidal ideation.
One of the most profound experiences I had with a client had nothing to do with stripping. I approached an older gentleman at the bar and introduced myself. He seemed nervous; he was on vacation from Scotland and had never visited a strip club before. I offered him a lap dance, to which he politely declined, and we both went on with our evenings. About an hour later, I reapproached him and asked if he’d had a change of heart—he had. When we entered the VIP room, I told him to sit down and laid out the basic rules. When I noticed that he was shaking, I made sure to ask him what his boundaries were. He replied: “I trust you.”
I told him that if at any point during the dance he felt uncomfortable for whatever reason, he should let me know and we would stop. The song started and I began slowly dancing in front of him, then rested my hands gently on his shoulders. He began shaking even more, but not in a sexual way—in a nervous way.
I asked if he was alright, to which he replied that he was—but then he began to stutter and tear up.
“I haven’t been touched by a woman since my wife passed away seven years ago,” he said between tears.
As he cried, I did, too. We spent the rest of our time in that room together holding one another as I gently caressed his back and arms. I didn’t even take my clothes off.
To this day, I still tear up when I tell this story. It was the first time I realized that we, as sex workers, have the power of providing intimacy to people who may not be able to access it otherwise.
Our job is to make customers feel comfortable, desired, and heard. Sex workers offer a safe space for all people—whether they’re lonely, neurodivergent, disabled, or inexperienced. We provide the opportunity to access intimacy and connection in an authentic and non-judgemental way.
A running joke in my friend group (90 per cent of us
being sex workers) is that at the end of the day, we’re all just sexy therapists. Providing emotional support to our clients is paramount, and we all benefit from it.
A common misconception about strippers is that all we do is tease. Sure, that’s a huge part of our job, but if clients just wanted to get horny, they could do so from the confines of their own homes. Those who step through our doors come for more than that—they come for the eye contact, the proximity, the hug they may not have had in too long, the smell of perfume. They come for the one-on-one experience.
Although sometimes draining, being a sex worker and providing both physical and emotional services to my clients brings me a lot of pride. Consider this next time you think that all we do is take our clothes off.
Eden Apple is a sex worker living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Twleil-Waututh peoples.