published at 13th of june 2023
Lees dit artikel in het Nederlands
It’s so hard coming out of the closet as a doctor. People asking you all kinds of invasive questions like whether the operating theatre is dangerous with all those scalpels lying around, what’s the freakiest illness you’ve seen, whether there’s lots of exploitation of medical interns and nursing staff. Good thing we’re sex workers, and don’t have to deal with any of that!
Still, coming out to family is tough. We’re quite stuck with them, and some of us (me!) are hoping that one day we might meet their approval. So it’s pretty scary - they could judge us, reject us or respond negatively for all eternity!
Life or death situation
One day my Dad asked me to have lunch with him, because he wanted to talk to me. This was so out of character for him that, coupled with his history of heart problems, I was certain he would announce his impending death. Instead he requested my feedback on a passage he’d received from a famous Dutch writer, for an art project. For all her provocative writing on topics around sex, her text was rather disappointing: a sex worker drains the bank account of a sex and gambling addicted client purely to fund her passion for Manolo Blahniks. What a cliché - we don’t spend our hard earned cash on overpriced shoes, we need it to pay for medical school! We need it to feed our heroin addiction, our 13 sickly urchins, and our traffickers!
My frustration with this lazy sex work stereotype, coupled with my relief that my father was in fact not dying of some horrible illness, somehow prompted me to tell him about my work. “I’m glad you found your path,” he responded dryly. Months later, in a strange twist of fate, the famous writer almost booked me (not knowing who I was) with the explicit idea of then writing about her experience.
Morals
My Mom doesn’t know what I do, she’s still not over the (fake) belly piercing I got as a thirteen year old, so one step at a time. We’re not required to tell anyone - it’s our life, sex work is just a job, not the scarlet letter that society is trying to make us believe it is. Plus, our physical, emotional or financial safety could be at stake.
But maybe you do want to tell them, instead of hiding your job from your family. Leading a double life can be exhausting. If they don’t respond well, you can train them by cutting off conversations when they become judgmental or insulting, and they should eventually get the message. If not, a year is more than enough time to adjust and get over the disappointment of their child not working for a nice corporation… draining water from poor countries and selling it back to them in plastic bottles, covering up oil spills, implementing ethnic profiling in the Dutch tax office, or researching oxycodone at a prestigious pharmaceutical lab. If all else fails, a little reminder about morals and career choices should help.
Illustrations by Margreet de Heer
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