Corpus & Labour
On what I can and cannot tell you
I can tell you about my decade in consulting in the corporate world. I can tell you I’ve read the academic literature on sex work, labour, and feminism. I can tell you about my politics. What I can’t tell you is my name, and that’s exactly what this Substack is about.
So, who am I? I am someone who, after spending over a decade working for various firms, agencies, and consultancies, deeply understands the machinations of the corporate workplace. The later years of my corporate career focused on what would broadly fall under the umbrella of management consulting, but—perhaps paradoxically—done through the lens of equity. I have a Bachelor’s degree from a Canadian university and pursued post-graduate programming at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Much of my focus was on untangling ‘how do we make work work for people?’ within capitalist structures.
I am also a professional Dominatrix and an adult content creator. There is inherent privilege in both of these roles, which I will likely unpack more deeply in this publication. Not all sex work looks like the kind I perform. For instance, I have never had to engage in survival sex work and have consensually chosen this line of work (and in fact, I see it as a vocation). My ability to frame this line of work as a personal calling itself comes from a position of race and class privilege.
I am a feminist. Women, both transgender and cisgender, are at the centre of my politics and will therefore be at the centre of my writing. This is not to dismiss the experiences of other genders selling sex, rather a recognition that, as Molly Smith and Juno Mac write in Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights, ‘the sex industry is gendered: the majority of those who sell sex are women and the majority of those who pay for sex are men.’1
Additionally, I am white, queer, cisgender, and live with a chronic illness. All of these aspects of my identity and background influence my lens on sex work, labour, and feminism. Even being Canadian is noteworthy as our country operates under the Nordic model, the pitfalls of which I will undoubtedly cover in this publication. (Canada’s legal framework criminalizes the purchase of sex while decriminalizing its sale—a model presented as protective but which we sex workers largely oppose.) These aspects of my identity also create limitations on my perspectives. I am only an expert on my own lived experience and cannot claim to speak for all sex workers.
What I can do, and what I aim to achieve with Corpus & Labour, is do the work of translation: taking rigorous academic and activist arguments and making them more accessible for an audience that is curious but perhaps not yet converted. Corpus, Latin for body, refers to the body of work, the accumulated record, the legal canon. It also, of course, simply refers to the body. Sex work is so often referred to as “selling one’s body.” However, as I will explore in this publication, it is far less about the body itself and far more about the labour. That distinction—between the body and the labour—is where this publication begins.
Corpus & Labour is largely for the wrestling-with-it crowd. You’ve probably had a conversation about sex work where you weren’t sure what you thought, or where you said something and later wondered if you’d gotten it wrong. Perhaps you identify as a feminist, but there are elements of the sex industry that feel incompatible with your feminism, and you’re curious enough to unpack that discomfort. Perhaps you are staunchly pro-sex work but don’t have the language to defend those instincts. Perhaps you simply have a morbid curiosity about the work we do, especially when it’s (structurally required to be) cloaked in so much shadow.
This space is built on a few shared commitments:
Curiosity over certainty. You don’t need to have this figured out to be here. Bring your questions, your discomfort, your half-formed thoughts.
Warm nuance over hot takes. No social issue is ever black and white. Universalizing experiences rarely helps those most impacted. The truth usually resides in the uncomfortable grey area in between.
Sit with the discomfort before you respond. If something unsettles you, that’s worth examining. I encourage you to wrestle with that yourself first before engaging.
Centre the people most affected. Arguments that consistently talk over sex workers, rather than engaging with their actual perspectives, will be redirected.
Good faith is required. Rescue narratives, bad-faith feminist objections, whataboutisms, and uncritical cheerleading are all equally unwelcome. This space is for thinking, not for preaching.
Language evolves. If you use a term that isn’t right, you’ll be gently corrected. Extend that same patience to others.
This is also for my fellow whores, both to feel seen and heard and to keep me accountable when there are inevitable gaps in my perspectives, because more thoughtful discourse begins when we centre the perspectives and lived experiences of sex workers.
Yours in solidarity,
MC
Molly Smith and Juno Mac, Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights (London: Verso, 2018).
Thank you so much for writing this. Perspectives like yours are desperately needed. I cannot wait to read all of your informative, amusing, and essentially enlightening essays. Eternally grateful that you exist.