[This is Chapter 1.3 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link.]

With all that, let’s get back to Ashley Judd’s genuinely impressive sexual performance in Normal Life. In this film, she deftly plays an emotionally-unhinged lab technician, with a passion for astronomy, and a serious problem with pills, alcohol, and overspending. She gets involved with a cop played by Luke Perry. Her sexuality (starting from an inability to orgasm) begins to open up to him, the more she spends his money, and the more he lavishes her with gifts he can’t afford on his cop’s salary. Liking the sexual effect his gift-giving has on her, Perry eventually turns to bank robberies to fund their lifestyle. Their newly-rich lifestyle leads to increasingly explosive sex between them, including the fuck-a-thon described at the opening of this chapter.

Here, a production company “bought sexual access” to Luke Perry and Ashley Judd for their explicit and impassioned performance. This purchase including access to their “orifices” as they made out with each other passionately, and as Luke Perry licked Judd’s cleavage.

(Note: the phrases in quotation marks in the paragraph above, and in the paragraph below, are from Ashley Judd’s tweet about sex work here.)

Was this “body invasion”—as Judd calls sex work—of Perry’s mouth into Judd’s mouth and vice-versa “inherently harmful” to either? Was “cash the proof of coercion” for Judd’s sexual performance? And if “buying sexual access commodifies something that is beyond the realm of capitalism and entrepreneurship,” as Judd puts it, then why did she accept payment for this sexual performance? Is the Hollywood film industry not a part of capitalism?

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[This is Chapter 1.2 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link]

As we will see in detail in this book, the Nordic Model—and the accompanying baggage, stigma, stereotypes, gaslighting of sex workers’ own experiences and boundaries, and de-facto criminalization it heaps on sex workers—goes squarely against all of the ideals professed by Ashley Judd and other Nordic Model proponents also involved in the #MeToo movement. All this makes Judd and her colleagues in Nordic Model advocacy, unfortunately, justly described as anti-sex-worker advocates.

Why? Just look at the way they erase the very existence of sex workers when sex workers are demanding them loudly and publicly not to.

In 2018, Judd gave a talk at the feminist co-working space The Wing in New York, promoting the Nordic Model. In this talk (see the embedded video), she said, “There’s no such thing as sex work.” In the run-up to this talk, she had also approvingly retweeted tweets by other organizations in the ASW coalition that stated “#NeitherSexNorWork” and “#SexWorkIsNeither.” And one prominent ASW feminist whom Ashley Judd describes as her own “HERO,” and whom Judd introduced at ASW events, is Rachel Moran, who has tweeted, “There’s no such thing as ‘sex work’ – therefore there is no such thing as a ‘sex worker.'”

If you regard yourself as a sex worker—as hundreds of sex workers who responded on social media in outrage to these statements do—then it would seem fair to say that someone who says you don’t even exist and that you’re wrong to think that you do exist is “against” you. Hence I believe the term “anti-sex-worker” is a perfectly valid, in fact, objective, description of this stance towards sex workers.

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[This is Chapter 1.1 of Sex, Cash & Privacy: The Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For previous and subsequent segments, click on that link.]

It could have been a porn movie.

With heavy metal blazing, a topless woman with bleached-blonde hair tackles her male sex partner in a fit of passion, rips his shirt off, and makes out furiously with him. She then jumps off him, rips his pants off, and jumps right back on top of him. She slides her head down his chest towards his crotch, as her clutched fingers scratch violently down his chest in tow and her head bobs.

He leaps off the bed, pulls her up while she straddles him, and then slams her back down on the bed, now on top of her still furiously making out. He rips her panties off and starts thrusting her from on top, as he shoves his tongue into her cleavage. She lets out staccato orgasmic huffs and screams at each of his aggressive thrusts. Her head hangs back off the edge of the bed, upside down, and she pushes up on the carpet so as not to fall off the bed from his vigorous thrusting.

She writhes in ecstasy and screams in pleasure even more as he chokes her gruffly. Now he’s leaning off the bed too on top of her, gymnastically propping himself up with one arm, so they don’t fall off together as he continues to thrust her energetically. Now they fall off the bed and roll over onto each other, as they catch their breath in post-orgasmic gasps of air. 

It could have been any porn film, but it was not porn. It was a rated-R movie, Normal Life (1996), featuring Luke Perry and Ashley Judd.

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[This is the Introduction of Sex, Cash & Privacy: A Case for Allowing People to Profit From Their Own Sexuality in Peace. For subsequent segments, click on that link.]

I believe that dictating the way a person relates to their sexuality is one of the gravest wrongs a society can impose, so long as that person is not directly harming others in their sexual activity.

The past sixty years have seen the greatest reduction of this type of societal wrong in human history. In many parts of the world, we have thankfully decided “it’s none of our business” whether another person:

• Fucks before marriage
• Fucks using contraception
• Fucks someone of a different race
• Fucks someone of the same sex
• Fucks (or is fucked) in the ass
• Fucks themselves
• Fucks with sex toys
• Fucks while watching other people fucking
• Fucks multiple people
• Fucks rough (consensually)
• Fucks with kinky role plays
• Fucks while high on cannabis
• Fucks in a furry costume (even more entertaining when combined with the previous…)
• Etc. Etc.

When society decides that these and other activities among consenting adults is “none of our business,” it does not mean that all people who respect this “bedroom privacy” of others—as I call it—approve of all such activity that goes on in others’ bedrooms. It does not mean everyone thinks all such activity is socially beneficial.  It does not mean everyone in society would be happy if their teenagers (or even grown children) engaged in such activity.

And it certainly does not mean everyone would want to try all such activity themselves (unless one is, like me, a “try-sexual”: I’ll try pretty much anything once).

It just means we have decided that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. . . is none of our damn business.

It’s not our business to judge, and it’s certainly not our business to get the law, the police, or the courts involved.

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One of the people I admire most is my friend and collaborator Ckiara Rose. Ckiara is an activist for sex worker rights, human rights, and environmental rights. 

She just turned 50, is the proud mother of a 26 year-old son, and she has been out and proud as sex worker for over 30 years, since she was 19. During that time, she has done everything from stripping to porn to escorting, and now focuses on erotic massage and professional Dominance. 

I was honored to be invited as the interviewer for the inaugural episode of her new show Ckiara Nation. In this episode, she talks with her longtime friend Miss Taylor J, also a porn performer and escort, and a mother of four children. 

In this episode, they share about:

• What sex work means to them
• Femininity vs. (anti-sex worker) feminism
• Feminists who want to shut down sex work by criminalizing their clients, and why that’s wrong
• What it’s like to be a sex worker and a mom–and how sex work supports them to be better parents
• What they teach their clients, and why they love them
• And so much more!

They’ve both been doing this work for a long time, and they have to say about sex, and sex worker rights, so listen up! 

Watch Episode 1 of Ckiara Nation here.