Lewis, who was raised as a feminist and often frequented the women's studies
section of the public library, claims that she initially saw her position as a
sex worker as a means of economic empowerment. But after several years in the
industry, the financial benefits began to be overshadowed by the detrimental
social and emotional effects.
"I started thinking about love and started thinking about what sex really is,"
she said. "I started thinking about what that was actually for, and I thought:
it's to communicate love, it's to communicate affection, it's to communicate
lust, it's to communicate trust ... And it occurred to me that the sex industry
was this disturbing perversion of that ... There was no love, and there was no
caring; there was no gentleness. There was nothing erotic about it in any way,
and the communication was all lies ... Frankly, it broke my heart. And that's
when I started writing my book."
Though she said that sex work is part of the larger problem of commodity
fetishism - that is, the reduction of human relations to that of producer and
consumer - Lewis also said, "The difference between the ugliness of me not
seeing the fry-guy [at McDonald's] as a human being and a guy who gets jacked
off by me not seeing me as a human being ... [is that] it enters such an
intimate, sexual realm, which is, by definition, something you do to get close
to another human being. I think sex work is a really efficient way of
alienating human beings from each other."
Lewis went on to cite the experience of sex workers who have trouble
differentiating between sex acts with clients and sex acts with romantic
partners.
"I had always viewed the sex industry as both a valuable means of income for
women of lower economic backgrounds, though likewise had believed making a
human being into a commodity was despicable," said Kristen Alldredge '09.
"Sarah made an excellent point that, while the sex industry is exploitative of
women, it goes both ways. She said she was equally exploitative of the male
customers, whom she eventually failed to view as humans."
Lewis, who is still active in the sex industry, also struggles with her
underlying ideology, at times filled with "self-loathing" for allowing herself
to be incorporated into an oppressive patriarchal system and at others deciding
that "the most feminist thing I can do today is earn the money to pay my rent."
"When I wake up and I feel the best, I think, a) I'm going to pay my rent and
buy food for myself - that's a profoundly feminist act for a working-class
woman, is to take care of herself - and then b) I'm going to use the money I
make and the time that I have to go out and spread the word. So that's how I
can be at peace with myself, but it varies."
According to Lewis, one of her goals in publishing her memoir was to humanize
sex workers in the eyes of those who believe they are not worthy of legal
protection. As an example, she described the difficulty of working under
Seattle law, which allows performers to strip naked but forbids simulated sex
acts onstage. According to Lewis, the subjective nature of this statute,
combined with law-enforcement quotas, can lead to selective issuing of tickets,
which many strippers are wary of contesting for fear of openly revealing their
status as sex-workers.
The presentation was coordinated by Ashwin Iyengar '09, a Cornell Gay-Straight
Alliance co-facilitator, and funded by Haven, an administrative network for
Cornell's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Questioning groups. Iyengar, who
first came across Lewis' book in the gender and sexuality section of Borders,
ascribed Lewis' appeal to her unique perspective.
"She's not the stereotypical, ditzy ... 'hooker,'" Iyengar said. "At the same
time she's not like the protagonist in a lot of books I've read, where it's the
doctoral student working on her dissertation, and she happens to strip on the
side. She does this for a living."
