IGNACIO G. HUTÍA XEITI RIVERA
Something shook me that day in psychology class. Something shifted, was unhinged, or even shattered. I can’t tell. I was in my early twenties, in community college, a newly out lesbian, and an independent mom. I had already been on my own for several years, since the day I left home as a teenager. The day that I stuffed two black garbage bags with my clothes, threw them out my fourth-floor balcony, grabbed my school bag, and walked out the house like every other morning. But this time, I didn’t return.
I didn’t leave because my childhood was horrible. It was a regular childhood for the most part—wonderful at times and shitty at others. I left because I was exhausted occupying the shadows of my older sister. Her mishaps, transgressions, and failures cast unearned doubt onto me. My mother was a bit freer with her—in the beginning. She allowed her to wear makeup at fourteen, reluctantly allowed her to have a boyfriend, gave her freedom, and she fucked it all up. For both of us. She became entangled with the wrong crowd, got mixed up in drugs, and caused our family a lot of heartache. My parents weren’t about to make the same mistake with me. I lived under watchful eyes. I was told—it seems like daily—to learn from her mistakes. I never got the chance to learn because my mother eliminated the possibility. I wasn’t allowed to join any extracurricular activities, have friends over, go to friends’ houses, or go out to parties. It felt like my whole world revolved around my sister’s wrongdoings. After she ran away, the goal to “protect” me became stronger. I was tired of her, and the room we once shared.
I grew up in a Boricua household. Youngest of three, I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. I’ve always been the weirdo of the family. I’m the queer one, the nonbinary one, the polyamorous one, the vegan one, the sober one, the one who recycles. When I was a little girl, I lived in my head a lot. I was an avid diary writer and would escape into books any chance I could get, I advocated for street animals in our neighborhood, and I had a very big secret. That secret made me feel the weirdest of all. From the time I was that little girl, up until I was the twenty-year-old lesbian sitting in psychology class, I carried that secret. Although I always had the sense of knowing that what happened throughout my childhood was wrong, I didn’t have a name for it and I didn’t realize the impact it would have on me.
That day in class, our professor prepared us to watch a short film about family reunification after sexual abuse. This eighties-style film showcased a family—mother, father, and two adolescent girls—in a therapy session addressing the father’s sexual abuse of the eldest girl. I can’t even remember what the therapist or the family said. I just remember feeling my body. I was trembling. My throat felt blocked. I wanted to scream, cry, and run. I could hear my heart and nothing else. I was so utterly confused. My father had never done anything to harm me, so why was I having such a strong reaction? I ran out of the classroom to the bathroom and fell into a puddle of tears and rage that I could not identify.
I tried desperately to control the downpour onto my flushed cheeks, taking long deep breaths to calm the anxiety. The face of the eldest daughter from the film was burnt into my brain. Her fear and discomfort were apparent. I was sad for her. I was angry for her. Why did she have to sit in front of him—the one who harmed her. I realized how similar we were. A mirror image of shame, fear, and confusion. I made several attempts at reentering the classroom, but each time I failed. The tears would not stop and the thoughts and feelings had just begun. All became clear. The thing that had no name, the secret, was (re)introduced to me—the manipulations, the unwanted touches and threats; I had been sexually abused. It wasn’t my father who did these things to me, but it happened in the house I ran away from, in that room we shared, at my sister’s hands.
WHEN I BEGAN working in a dungeon, I was not new to BDSM. I was an avid “player,” and in those days I was navigating submission with joy. A friend of mine who worked at a Midtown dungeon told me about the job. When I accepted work there, I was told there would be a training, but we were merely informed of the house rules. I had to learn on the job. I began to appreciate what some called the “Bad Johns” list or the “Frequent Flyers” list, where the names and stories of the ones to look out for were told. We shared stories about those who had unique fetishes or bad hygiene, and also named the dangerous ones. There was “Mental Dental,” who came equipped with his own needles, novocaine, and extractor forceps. Or “Pig Pen,” the cuddler who didn’t bathe. There was also the guy obsessed with muscular women. He’d love to watch our baby-oiled bodies flex and then try at every chance to force our hands to jerk him off. Then there was the guy who’d pay for submissives and tie them up to get forced blow jobs. There was also the “Dangerous Top.” We were warned about his aggression, his need to push the boundaries of pain. The Dommes and other sex workers shared their warnings to watch out for manipulators, harm doers, and con artists. Yet, they couldn’t help me dodge all bad situations.
The majority of my clients were interested in my Blackness and my Latinaness. Clients prepared themselves with fantasy-filled, jungle-fever role-play skits based on a Spanish-talking hot mama, a Black Goddess sentencing them to punishment for their whiteness, making them beg for mercy. I wanted to gain clients, not lose them, so I played along.
Most of the Dommes at the dungeon were small framed. I wasn’t, so I would often be picked to do wrestling scenes. There were two types of wrestling: competitive and fantasy. Fantasy was easy. There was really no muscle involved, just bodies rolling around while we grunted and moaned. But there wasn’t as much money in fantasy wrestling as there was in competitive wrestling. The competitive sessions paid more because we definitely used muscle. There was this guy who came in several times to see me. Ahead of time, he would request that I wear a two-piece suit. While in session, we would wrestle intensely. He was very strong, broad, tall, muscular, and hairy. He would toy with me, let me get the upper hand at times, but put me in my place every time he got me on the mat. Pinned down, his hands would explore parts of my body that I had not consented to be touched. He would push aside my clothes to touch, rub, and lick as his sweaty body lay on mine.
I never complained and kept such instances of sexual violation to myself. I would go back and forth in my own head, telling myself that on the one hand, sexual violations came with the territory, and on the other hand, I knew that I deserved to be treated better. Sadly, I was too used to that type of aggressive behavior to formulate a reasonable frame of reference.
WHAT DOES ONE scene of abuse—my own experience of child sexual abuse—have to do with the other—repeated assaults by a sex work client? People often want to know if one type of trauma led to another, to explain the possibility of choosing sex work as a product of one’s past. Did something happen to you? Were you abused as a child? Do you have daddy issues? Were you raped? As a sex worker, I’ve been asked all of these questions by people seeking revelations about why sex workers are sex workers. There must be a trauma or tragedy to bring someone to demean themselves as a sex worker. The fact that I was sexually abused as a child and now I am a sex worker who’s experienced sexual abuse as an adult is a complexity I hold within myself. As much as sex work has given me a path to heal, I continue to be a work in progress.
MY SEX WORK was part of my journey to find my body, desire, curiosity, agency, and sexuality. When I had previously considered sex work to help supplement my income, the fear of losing my infant daughter had been too great. I was a “single,” lesbian of color, “welfare mom” as it were, and too afraid to add another stigmatized descriptor. But my daughter grew older and I felt more connected to my body than ever. Years of learning about sex and bodies had empowered me to claim my own pleasure, and be excited and curious about the world of sex. Sex work was therapy for me. And I was getting paid for it. Most of the time my work made me feel electrified, but at others, I felt insignificant. I suppose a teacher, a mother, or a security guard could say the same. More than anything, when it came down to it, sex work happened to sit at the intersection of money, flexibility, and more time with my daughter. I was a survivor who chose sex work from a place of empowerment; however, not all sex workers come into work from empowerment, and not all sex workers have to grapple with survivorship complicating their work.
Sex workers are simultaneously the perfect victims and the wrong kind of victims. Well-meaning sympathizers who don’t hold our “brokenness” against us make sure that it defines us. When we are sexually assaulted on the job, the victim paradox obscures the legitimacy of our grievances. On the one hand, sex workers are seen as the perfect victims because we are assumed to already be survivors. On the other hand, sex workers are the wrong kind of victim: we cannot experience sexual violence because of the nature of the work we do. I was a sex worker who happened to already be a survivor. However, I did not become a sex worker out of brokenness, barely glued together by self-loathing sex work. The types of sex work I have chosen to do are ones that come with power and privilege. I have worked as a naked prostate masseuse in a parlor with security, a nude dancer protected by glass walls, a pro-Domme in the comfort of a camera-filled dungeon, and an adult film actor on sex-positive queer feminist porn sets. Sex work for me is about harnessing my own power, pulling down the deadpan body hovering over powerless sex acts and claiming agency.
As a naked masseuse, my clients weren’t allowed to touch me. I did all the touching and prodding. My naked body was but a prop. I wasn’t touched when I danced. I loved being the girl behind the glass wall. I would do my dance and touch myself. I would listen to the heavy moans over the phones adorning either side of the glass. The men would explode while clenching the receiver, holding themselves with their other hand, pressed up against the slutty glass. I felt power in my ability to seduce. In my work within queer feminist porn, I love to be touched. I have agency in porn work—from who I do scenes with, to what we do, what items we use, and how we discuss and practice safer sex. I’ve felt most in my body there.
THE EXCLUSION OF sex work from the realm of work itself precludes any discussion around workplace protections for sex workers. The sex worker, the broken whore, is either deemed a survivor prior to entering this line of work, or assumed to become one after starting. Within this framework, there is no room for nuance or discussion that doesn’t end with the abolishment of sex work itself. When sex work isn’t work and sex workers are too broken for protection, where does the conversation about the sexual assault of sex workers belong?
Any work we do to end sexual violence should be led by those at the margins. Sexual violence does not discriminate according to identity or privilege, yet as survivors, we all have our unique struggles. We are in a tremendous moment that is redefining consent and taking a broader look at sexual harm. However, sexual violence cannot be fully addressed until we reckon with the epidemic of child sexual abuse. We cannot continue without understanding where sex workers fit in as “valid” targets of sexual harm. We must build a movement that is not just about white women. We must fight for the invisibles: the street worker, the little girl, the Black trans woman, and the go-go dancer. It’s about shining light on the sprouts of deep buried secrets, making visible the incomprehensible, and proclaiming that our stories and our healing matters.