Kink, sex and money (continued)

In yesterday’s post I was pondering the intersection of sex and commercial domination, and suggesting that the laws around sex work had led to the well defined modern pro-domme industry. I thought in this continuation post it’d be worth thinking about the other side of the sex work coin, the escort business.

Now I have to admit that I don’t have as much experience in this area as I do with pro-dommes. However, I have hung out on a wide variety of sex forums and sites, and I’ve always been puzzled by one question. Why aren’t there more kinky escorts? While legal issues may have helped shape the pro-domme industry, why should that have any impact on escorts? In the vast majority of the US (outside a few bits of Nevada) paying for sex is illegal. So given escorts are already operating without the same legal and conventional boundaries pro-dommes typically have, why do so few not try to broaden their appeal to capture both the sexual and the kinky market?

I should probably briefly pause at this point to make clear that I’m not suggesting that the skill-sets between the two professions are the same. Or that all an escort needs to do to steal some pro-domme customers is to buy herself a whip and a pair of leather boots. But at the same time, you don’t necessarily need a MA in rope suspension and a PhD in medical play to mix some light kink with a little sex. Why isn’t that category better represented by sex workers?

My personal theory is that the reason can be indirectly traced back to those same laws that helped define conventional pro-domme activities. As I suggested yesterday those laws created a fairly well defined idea of what a pro-domme is and does. It’s a role that’s externally perceived to be about pain, punishment and humiliation. It’s about naked guys on all fours while a woman struts about dressed like a leather clad Nazi stormtrooper. There’s no fun and there’s no pleasure (as it’s conventionally defined). I think that’s an incorrect perception, I’ve had all sorts of fun, playful and pleasurable sessions, but it’s a common one.

This dichotomy of sex and kink creates a marketing problem for anyone trying to bridge it. The kind of forums where you can advertise and reach out to pro-domme clients frown on any kind of sexual service. There’s the ‘circling the wagons’ syndrome I discussed yesterday from the dommes (‘escort with a whip’ is a common disparaging description), and there’s the site moderators worried about any legal ramifications. Well know places like Max Fisch will rapidly delete any discussion that touches on potentially illegal behavior. On the flip-side, trying to market to the escort customers who might be kinky, runs the risk of scaring them off with all that weird BDSM stuff. Mistress Matisse wrote a blog post several years ago that touched on this. She had a friend who worked as an escort and would call up Matisse if one of her regulars suggested anything a little kinky…

…she always introduced me by another name, because a lot of her guys displayed nervousness when she floated the idea of bringing in “a pro domme”. Oh, no thank you, that would be too much, they’d say. They weren’t that kinky. But when Miss K said something like “I have a girlfriend who has a flogger and a strap-on” – or whatever the appropriate thing was – the answer was: “Sure, love to meet her!”
Mistress Matisse

The ironic thing about the very limited intersection between these two commercial areas is that in the non-commercial domain that’s where most kinky people find themselves. A couple exploring BDSM doesn’t rush out to fit a hard point in the bedroom, buy a 6 foot bullwhip and enroll in advanced classes in piercing and cutting. Instead they do a little bondage, maybe some spanking or CBT and buy a few fun toys to try. Even among couples who get seriously interested in it, there seem to be very few who take it to the level of putting together the kind of set-up you’d find a pro-domme using.

Personally this gap in the market doesn’t bother me too much. I like the kind of intense and heavy pure BDSM sessions a skilled pro-domme can put together. Sex is pretty much the last thing on my hand after I’ve been bound and tortured for two hours. But I do think the distortion to the market caused by the law in this area probably leaves a lot of potential clients out in the cold. They don’t think they’re kinky enough to see a pro-domme, but they’d like a little more than meaningless vanilla sex.

At this point I’m going to once again stop with things still left to say. Looks like this’ll have to stretch to an unprecedented third post. Tune in tomorrow for more of my meandering thoughts.

Finding an image for this post wasn’t easy. I really wanted a shot of that rare breed – a kinky escort. Luckily my hard drive is replete with images from odd sources, and I managed to locate this one. The woman here is Tigerr Juggs, a London and Tokyo based escort who offers a very complete set of kinky services.