30″ Radio Spot:

ANNOUNCER: Everyone needs intimate touch. Sex pros could make this possible for you for a few hundred or thousand dollars. Intimacy should be affordable for everyone that needs it, especially older men and women on fixed incomes, who face neotony in the sex market. Subsidize sex work! Donate now to Citizens United to Subsidize Sex* Help CUSS put a smile on every [adult consenting] face in the world. 

… End of Announcement …

 Campaign for positive sex positive activism

Even when sex positive activists speak about sexually repressive political policy, media sensationalizes this sex geekdom as if it was a sect opposing middle class values rather than the expression of middle class materialism at apogee.. Reactionary rhetoric about freedom, justice and equality just isn’t enough to enroll our culture in growing up and sexually we’re as if stuck somewhere in pre-adolescence. To shift this, we must talk about the real possibility of sexual freedom instead of polarizing sex ideology. This is the one thing we have to learn from the success of a  poorly written and less well informed sensationalist novel that has done more to inform a popular movement toward open sexual communication than has the work of all sexologists since Kinsey.

Arguing for the validity of sex work is the same as arguing for breathing.  We must bring advocacy to supporting sex work. This is critical to causing a  sex positive cultural transformation. To inspire support, we must enroll people in a possibility that they can get their sex needs met. For this, we must address the economics.

A quality sex worker is the most costly personal service imaginable. Sex service is more demanding, artful and costly to provide than are services of most medical practitioners, lawyers and your average rock star. It would interest those outside the circle of sex friendly activists to understand why sex is costly and we need to enroll them in a more powerful place about this in terms of their needs and values.

I’m not inspired to support an industry that provides services only to the wealthy by entrepreneurs who are naturally dismissive of those those who can’t afford their fees because they feel called upon to defend the value of their own bodies. But the cost of sex, however justifiable,  discriminates against all people on a budget, for instance, the elderly, the majority of whom are in dire need of intimate contact and many of whom suffer depression as a result of isolation that could be ameliorated by intimate physical contact.

For the mainstream to be moved to invest more than fascination with anything sexual, the sex industry must address this economic disparity and advocate for making sex economically accessible to any person who needs it, providing always that it’s a client’s responsibility to enroll a provider in serving them, even when money is no issue. The efficacy of this idea is demonstrated by affordable internet porn.

Were money not an issue, the sex industry would expand, and so would freedom of sexual communication. There would be more interest in sexual relationship workshops, especially about how to successfully enroll a sex partner, whether for pay or not.

The need for public support of sex is unquestionable. Sexual expression is directly related to mental and physical well-being. Physical illnesses arise from depression and sexual fulfillment  empowers high self esteem. Nearly half the men in America over the age of 60 suffer depression and this rate is highest for African American men.  It’s inarguable that healthy sex can turn this around and it’s apparent that virtual sex (pornography) doesn’t deliver.

Physical intimacy is more empowering than virtual intimacy (pornography). Porn may have  therapeutic value, but it’s no substitute for real interpersonal relationship and physical touch by another obviously offers something substantially different.

The argument for decriminalization of sex work disappears within a conversation for supporting sex work. But there’s no integrity unless we insist that sex for pay is accessible to those who need it, regardless of economic circumstances. Universal medical care and education wasn’t always a commonly held position. Access to opportunities for sexual expression should not be limited by affordability to the economically privileged few and we must begin this conversation now if we’re going to change this.

Citizens United for Subsidized Sex advances the conversation for free sexual expression to a possibility of putting puritanism in its proper place in America–16th century New England.

Financial support for sex work questions the absurdity of the underlying stigma because it unconceals the way the status quo, with its economic disparity, supports the mystique, glamour and narcissism, rather than the inherent value of intimacy.  Making sex activism positive undermines the conservative strategy to denounce political leaders through innuendo about their sexual behavior.

Superstitious, ignorant and sex-phobic psychologies will be awakened by the notion but unless we put the question of paid sex work on a positive footing by making it progressive rather than reactionary, these phobics will continue to focus on hyperbolic moral rhetoric and sex positive spokespersons will continue to react. Isn’t it ironic that the most sexually repressive culture in the world today offers the possibility of sex with 90 virgins to reward it’s heroes, while this culture criminalizes sexual transactions.

We have state gambling concessions (lotteries), cigarette and alcohol taxes that support government programs and education. We have an increasing national debt because of our support of hugely costly outmoded weapons systems. We are still building freeways for automobiles in the face of global warming and the rising cost of energy production, electric, nuclear or fossil fuels. We are able to afford the cost of addressing the sexual needs of our population.

There’s another benefit to having this conversation:

Valuing sex more appropriately substantiates the economic aspect of all sexual relationships, including monogamous marriage. People naturally want to get what they pay for even when the transaction is called, marriage. Divorces result from economic issues associated with breakdowns in the sexual transaction as well as shared cohabitation expense. In this paradigm, the idea of a spouse as a chattel in a relationship is realistic because ownership comes with obligation. The only way to change this is economic support so that spouses who “fall out of love” can get their sexual needs met without leaving partners and children behind in broken homes.

The sex positive community-speak has assumed a high moral ground of meeting the needs of people in their communities. This aligns with and supports sex workers, who argue justifiably for their own needs, it is only coincidental that their needs involves sexual freedom.  Justifying the needs of clients puts integrity into the rhetoric.

Is it possible? Will it work? It doesn’t matter now, whether or not a ballot initiative to fund sex work would win: a public conversation about the possibility of supporting sexual fulfillment is about sexual freedom for the mainstream, aimed at serving needs regardless of the ability to pay, just as we do with medical care and education.

By leveling the playing field, the CUSS proposes to create a conversation for new measures of value in gender differences. It places the economic value of a vagina in consideration of the owners’ point of view. Supporting sex work can do more to stop illegal trafficking and victimizing and discriminatory laws. The process of accomplishing this will transform views of sex and of women. A proposal to subsidize sex work speaks to the rights and needs of adults with clits. Equal pay for equal work is just so much talk. The economic value of vaginas is far superior.

*Comments or questions:  michael@michaelwinn.org

…………………………………………………………

(I am an artist. The minute I take money to compose for some purpose, I’m a commercial artist. Though I bring my talent, passion, knowledge, heart and soul to a project I’m hired to produce, the product is compromised by priorities for which I’m paid and though there is quality in my commercial music, it isn’t a good piece for concert because there is no compromise in music composed for listeners. And this is the only question I will ever ask of the whore I adore.)