A Spiritual Orgasm and Self-Love through Sex Work: CK Love and Babe West

“A Spiritual Orgasm and Self-Love through Sex Work: CK Love and Babe West”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

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Intro music…

CK:

And I had the dream that Kali lifted up her skirt and let me crawl up into her womb, to see the universe. And I thought, Oh, my God, it’s like I have a whole universe within me. And that sensuality is that universe.

Babe:

…and then also doing the work at home in our own hearts, in our own minds, addressing the traumas, the reason why we feel the way we feel about things. Let’s not even talk about society. That’s going to free you. 

August (narration):

That was CK Love and Babe West, two women with very different and yet somewhat parallel stories. Both women have had to work hard to cultivate sexual empowerment and the self-embracement it can bring. And they both started out with odds stacked against them.

First, CK’s story. Today she’s a writer, director, author, filmmaker, yoga teacher, meditation teacher and therapist. Early on, her sensuality was a huge part of her, but she learned that it was shameful.

CK:  

I’ve never told anybody the story and I’ve never expressed this before, but my dad would keep Playboy magazines on his on the coffee table underneath the Time Magazine. And my mother would be distraught and beside herself about it. We were never told to touch his magazines. And how I know that there was a Playboy magazine underneath that is just because it was just you heard these fights. You heard the talking about it.

August (narration):

She said there was this sort of unspoken message that that kind of sexual expression was a bad thing.

CK:

And so she would try to bring us up as good girls. My father wanted good, pious girls – you know, wearing dresses and silent. Anything that kind of veered away from that kind of piety or that kind of good girl quality we got a lot of shaming around it. 

I remember there was a time when I wore my favorite top, it was red. It had short sleeves, it had a turtleneck. But it had a zipper up the front. And I was 10 years old, and I think I had budding little boobs. Little tiny, you know? And my mother came up to me in the front yard…because I had the zipper down. And she came up to me and she zipped that zipper up so fast that it caught a part of my neck. Yes, my skin. And she told me that ‘good girls don’t wear the zipper down.’

Because of the Playboy magazines and because of how the women dressed in the Playboy magazines, you know cut off shorts, or that kind of stuff – my mother never allowed us to wear anything that resembled anything that would make us into the bad girls in the magazines. And so there was a lot of shaming around around sexuality. 

August:

Do you remember how that felt to hear those messages?

CK:

I just felt very isolated. As a girl growing up, I felt very sensual. 

August (narration):

She loved dancing, running around without clothes on.

CK:

And to be shunned. Because you feel that way is embarrassing. It’s humiliating. It’s confusing. And I felt very isolated. 

I don’t know if I understood sexuality. All I knew was how I felt in my body was shameful. And that I wasn’t supposed to express myself that way.

August (narration):

CK attended Catholic school, where the sex advice was essentially: don’t do it. She was shown abortion pictures and the only thought she had about what sex might entail was that it would hurt—so she probably wouldn’t want to do it. Eventually, she learned little bits here and there from friends and older girls at her school. 

Then, at age nineteen, she had sex for the first time. And she realized it could actually be pretty wonderful.

CK:

And then I couldn’t get enough of it, much to his chagrin. I just badgered him all the time. [laughs]

August (narration):

CK didn’t know what sex was supposed to feel like, but she knew she loved what she felt. Between that exploration in he late teens and her sexual awakening in her mid-40s, her road felt pretty rocky. 

She went to university, had a boyfriend for about a year, a relationship that included the “usual sex stuff,” she said. But emotionally, the messaging she received early on was taking a toll. 

CK:  

I was very withdrawn, I was very confused and angry, I was very angry at at my whole family’s situation and how I grew up. 

I was angry at the fact that I went to the University at first because I didn’t want to do that I want to do something else. But I was forced to do that. And and so having boyfriends it was really hard for them, because I was a hard person.

August (narration):

On top of all of that, societal ideas about “female sexuality” crept—or more like wooshed—in. She attracted a lot of attention from men, but only, it seemed, for romance and sex…ideas of who they wanted her to be versus a whole person.

CK: 

Back then I was the kind of woman who had men all over me, like, you know, claiming their love for me and their undying affection and undying love and wanting to be with me forever. 

Because of that, I grew colder and colder because I started to feel like I was an object of desire as opposed to a person that had a brain. I was in architecture and and I had an aptitude towards it and inevitably, I would have a guy befriending me not because they liked my brain, but because they liked my body.

And then when you find out that the person that you have been befriending sort of just wants you for that you kind of get angrier because you lose the friendship one way or the other.

August (narration):

At one point, in the middle of her university years, she moved into a house to live with fellow architecture students. She took over the room of a guy, one year ahead of her, who was about to leave for the summer.

CK:

As he left, he claimed his and dying affection and attraction towards me. And he says, “I want your body I want you I want this, I want that. And, and because he kept on at it in and you know, days that kind of led up, I just said fine, we’ll have sex and so we had sex and and then that was that I never actually really talked to him again after that. 

August (narration):

My heart ached hearing CK describe that, especially after hearing about how connected she was to her sensuality as a kid…running around in her skivvies, dancing like no one saw. Where was the girl who felt free in her body? And who once loved sex? That kind of scenario unfolds for many folks, especially those of us reared as girls. 

CK felt torn between her innate desires that she didn’t really know how to connect to in an authentic way and not wanting to be perpetually objectified.

CK:

And maybe that was because of my upbringing, because I didn’t want to be seen as a sexual being. I didn’t want to be seen as the kind of person who was open that way. 

August:

It’s interesting, because it sounds like you naturally even growing up had this like connection to what you perceived as your sensuality, that you had this innate, you could perhaps call it sexual desire. Some people consider them kind of like synonymous, but you had this like fire in you and the sensuality in you, and then to feel so objectified all the time. That’s such a hard combination to have. Because you don’t want to—I mean, sometimes we want to be objectified. Maybe by a partner or if you’re performing in porn or something, then that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? But if  people aren’t seeing you as a person, you feel like a sex toy or something, tat changes things. And I’m curious if the desire you had with your first boyfriend, were you able to maintain that or feel it again? Did it grow? Or did the anger and those frustrations and all the patriarchal crap [half-laughs] push it down?

CK:  

Exactly, that’s what actually happened. 

And you know that those kinds of questions and I think, more than anything, the whole anger’s about. In those years after that first time into university, and even into my 30s is that you’re not in control. You have a sense of your own sensuality, but everybody coming at you is misinterpreting it. And so you have no control over it. Because your sense of identity from an early age is very patriarchal, and very controlled from a male gaze point of view. 

And so I was looking at myself from that point of view. And so used sex to a certain degree as a weapon. And as a as a get out of my face kind of thing. Let me move on with my life. Yeah. Okay. That the sexual acts didn’t mean much to me at that point in my life. 

Because, because of all that, it just became this, you know, saying a means to an end, boom, you’re done. We’re done. Just move on. I always felt out of control in those moments.

[encouraging acoustic music]

August (narration):

That all started to change for CK in her 40s. Leading up to that, she had ended a marriage she described as similar to her childhood, as far as religion-related strictness and shaming. She and her ex have remained friends, but that decision was difficult. She just knew she needed to “break free.”

CK:

So I broke free, and I went deep dive into therapy, and yoga and meditation. And at first that was about not necessarily controlling the body, but about getting so, so in touch with the body, and in touch with my psyche, and in touch with, you know, everything other than what had made me identify who I was. So to kind of shed all that stuff. 

And so yoga and meditation and therapy were really great tools to start getting me in touch with, with who I really was, and, and that sensuality.

August (narration):

She even decided to open up a yoga studio. Two years in, everything seemed to be going great, when she discovered something devastating. 

CK:

My world kind of shattered because the boyfriend that I had at the time broke up with me. He had an affair. So he left and I was so distraught, and I was so distraught at how distraught I was, I just couldn’t believe how unhinged I became. What the hell is that? 

August (narration):

She was supposed to be on top of things, in touch with her sensuality and sexuality. Things were supposed to be different now – better.

A few months later, CK asked her ex why it had happened, what had gone wrong—other than his own behaviors.

CK:

And he said that I was not very affectionate, and I was cold. And I was angry. 

August (narration):

She thought she had resolved that, but as she contemplated his words more, she realized she hadn’t opened up enough. The restriction from her youth wasn’t gone and she had more healing to do.

CK:

Although we had great sex, somehow, as a person, I was still closed. It was it was profoundly revealing to me that I still wasn’t that open person I thought I was. And you know, in spiritual practice, you have to know that you’re never done. You’re never cooked. 

August (narration):

So she asked herself what she could do.

CK:

Now that I’m alone, what can I do? And so what happened was, is that I started to go online. 

August (narration):

At that time, connecting with people virtually didn’t involve FaceTime or videos. It was mostly texting, typing back and forth, and sometimes phone calls.

And CK was on a mission. Before long, she met someone.

CK:

The kind of person I thought that I needed to, kind of, take me to the next level. He wanted a submissive. So he was, and I thought, that’s perfect. 

Because I’m a feminist: I am Woman, hear me roar! [laughs] I’m in charge. I’m in control. And I have to release that submissive quality that is part of the sensual life. 

And so we would be talking and he would talk about stuff, like, we would have to do ass-play because I’m into that. And he asked me to send him a picture. And so when I took the photograph, [camera snapping] I made sure I hid. [laughs] Because I’m still doing that. I made sure I had my nipples and my pussy and who I was, except for my lips, because I think my lips are pretty. 

So I sent in a picture. And he asked me why I was hiding. 

And I didn’t want to answer the question, because….

August (narration):

She doesn’t know why. But she knew she was hiding. So they hung up.

CK:

And I was thinking, Am I a prude? You know, what’s going on? I didn’t want to go to the places that that he wanted me to go. And I thought, again, oh, it’s just another man telling me what I should be in his life. Or in life. And at that moment, I just kind of shed everything.

August (narration):

In a story CK wrote about this experience called Dances in the Fire, she wrote:

“If I could act this part, the part of a woman who is open to things, who is open about her desires, who even has desires, will I transform into a being who is about light and confidence and positivity? Is that what I will turn into? Is that the goal? I look into the mirror above the sink and wonder if it’s big enough for all that.”

[music]

That night she dreamed about a goddess called Kali, who’s know for creation and destruction-

CK:

And she stomps on the heads of men and she wears the skulls of men around her waist. And she has a blue tongue, and-

August (narration):

CK later learned that holy people, called Sadhus, would wait for Kali to lift up he dress to show them the universe. 

CK:

And I had the dream that Kali like lifted up her skirt and let me crawl up into her womb, to see the universe. 

And I thought, Oh, my God, it’s like I have a whole universe within me. And, and that sensuality, is that universe.

August (narration):

In her story, CK wrote that all of her training as a therapist and her study of yoga had been preparing her for that moment. She wrote that all of the fears, shame, beliefs about her body she’d absorb turned into an energy, adding:

“I feel it burn deep within me. Like being flayed from within, all of it loosened from my very being through all the work, and I’m on fire.  My body lets go, I melt to the floor and sob. Naked and writhing, my body gives me the orgasmic release of becoming. A moment of grace.”

August: 

Would you describe that as almost like, I don’t know, like a spiritual orgasm? I mean it seemed like there was definitely a climax and a release.

CK:

Yes. Yeah. It was it was like that, that kind of sobbing that comes from that kind of release. 

And I was alone in my apartment. I was just on the floor sobbing. And released. Released and relieved. Completely relieved. 

August (narration):

She said those feelings were also fleeting. But they left her with a kind of solidness in her body that she hadn’t experienced before. A realness.

Not long after, she got back together with her last boyfriend, who she remains with today.

CK:

And the reason why is because I went to him so open and so raw, and just so open, that he just just couldn’t believe the change in me.

August (narration):

That change filtered into her work at her yoga studio, too. For example, she started teaching students in ways that were more intimate.

CK:

That was less about the yoga, and more about the heart; sort of bring the sensuality into yoga and meditation and not leave it out. I was more open-armed. I was more vulnerable with them. It was just really remarkable. 

August (narration):

Back at home, she and her partner experimented together with other people online, the way she had been on her own, exploring different kinds of sensuality together with a community she described as “amateur porn stars.” As a result, she and her boyfriend grew closer together and now share a more solid relationship. 

August:

Thinking back to your early days, the Playboy stack and the zipping up your shirt and all that stuff. Did you end up reflecting back on the things that contributed to the sexual repression?

CK:

It was definitely healing because I remember when I was a kid—it’s funny, I’ve never told this to anybody—but when I was a kid, I used to after my bath, I would take the face cloth and it was wet, and I would put it over my little nipples. And then I would look in the mirror and then let it fall and just like do a little dance. [laughs]

August (narration):

Aw. You did a little strip tease!

CK:

I did a little strip tease! And I loved doing it. And so it brought it full circle for me that I was doing a little naked dance for people and being that sensual woman that I’ve always wanted to be and always wanted to express and why not? 

I don’t know if all little girls do that. I don’t know if all women want to do that. But it was definitely a part of my very core, my being, to have that sensuality, to have that playfulness with sexuality and sensuality. And I was never able to play. And so finally, this whole opening gave me a chance to play. 

August (narration):

If you feel stuck in a place like CK once was and you’re feeling a bit lost, CK wanted you to hear this:

CK :

What’s in my heart for them is, is that I know how that feels. It feels horrible. Because there doesn’t seem to be a way out. If there’s anger around it to somehow find the bottom of that anger, find where that place takes you. And try to be totally honest with yourself.

August (narration):

You can read CK Love’s story, Dances in the Fire, inspired by the experience she shared today, in the anthology MIDLIFE ON FIRE: Risky Business. Real Stories. Women Writers. CK put the book together, along with Karen M. Bryson, and it features a range of stories by women writers, including my dear friend Heidi Mastrogiovanni, who you may recall from a couple of past episodes.

CK will be taking submissions for a second volume soon. She also plans to offer an online course related to Midlife on Fire that will culminate in a retreat.

To stay in the loop, visit her website www.restlessspiritproductions.com, or  follow her on Instagram: @CKlovewrites_LA and Twitter: @CKlovewrites. 

[guitar strum]

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[guitar strum]

August (narration):

Now the story of Babe West. As a heads up, this story does contain brief mentions of abuse.

Babe describes herself as a fat-bodied entertainer in the Pacific Northwest. She told me that sex work —namely porn, over the past two and half years—has helped her love herself radically and put herself first. 

That’s been deeply important for her, and challenging, given that she grew up in a highly religious family – and not the open minded sort – where abuse was normalized. 

Babe:

We had normalized abuse in our family. My grandmother’s like the matriarch, and she had been sexually abused in throughout her life and physically abused, you know, emotionally, and all those other things. So there wasn’t a lot of dialogue around empowering or even educating of our bodies. 

August (narration):

Some of her family members tried, but she ended up taking the lead herself pretty often. She had already been having her period and helping herself to menstrual products, for example, when her grandmother gave her a pamphlet on “the change.”

Babe:

Yeah, I just looked at my grandmother who had raised me at that point, and I was like, “Yeah, I’m already shaving, bleeding. Been there, done that.” [chuckles] So… There was a culture of embarrassment, too. It was not something that you took pride in, the changes of your body. 

August (narration):

Babe didn’t learn anything about sex or sex work growing up, other than what she was in the media.

Babe:

I remember watching things on HBO or seeing movies. My grandmother worked as a manager of a video chain and she would often screen the videos at home. So I remember being under 10 years old having seen “Show Girls.”

It was like cultures of the 90s. And women were often sexualized, and I don’t feel like that’s actually changed. I feel like, you know, teens, youth, women—we’re constantly sexualized and portrayed that way. So it was always out here in society. But as far as what we could be comfortable and talk about, and the narrative we get to write about ourselves, it was always hush, hush. We don’t talk about those things.

August (narration):

Babe told me that numerous things happening in her life then left her longing for attention. When she was a baby, her father murdered her mother. After that, her grandmother raised her.

Babe: 

And she was healing through her own trauma in a part of her life that was supposed to be about exploring herself. She was a teen mom, got married to get out of bad experiences, and the marriage was 22 years and was not happy. 

So she was dating a very young, very sexually open flight engineer, and he was like a partier, and all these things, and he sexually abused me. And that was ongoing. And it was something that she had been made aware of through various people in the family, and again, normalizing. And so our narratives around our bodies, especially—I learned very young that your body is there for other people. 

And as a woman, I never felt that I could make a decision without having to justify why I did it. And I’ve seen at multiple points growing up that any time any harm would happen, it was always well, “What did you do to initiate that kind of contact?”

August (narration):

Those circumstances – the abuse and the messages she received – weren’t the only factors that led Babe to seek or enjoy others’ attention. It’s also just who she is.

Babe West:

I’ve always gravitated to needing attention or wanting attention and exploring myself and knowing that I like all sorts of people. I am queer, and it was never encouraged because that was a sin. 

August (narration):

She said there was a lot of: What would the neighbors think? What would the pastor think?

Babe West:

And before I was a young adult, like before I was 13, 14, I had spent more time in my pastor’s office, talking to him and his wife about my perversions, than seeing a therapist. 

And I’m not bashing on people’s religious freedoms or any of that but when you’re in a position of power and you’re not thinking about the words you say and how they impact people, you can leave children feeling broken and more shut down. And that can breed more at risk behavior, and that’s exactly what it did for me. 

August (narration):

Babe was eventually removed from the abusive situation. She was actually moved twice, she said, then given back to extended family, where the conservative religious beliefs continued.

Babe:

When I was finally permanently taken out of that home and put in with my aunt and my uncle, it was the same kind of environment. They didn’t know or feel confident in discussing things. So sex was a sin. 

So coming to them saying, “I’m having sex. I’m using condoms. I really want to get on birth control, because I don’t want to have a baby at 14.” It didn’t go over well, because they would not condone it. So I went as far as seeking outside help getting my health counselor, my school counselor, and had these adults advocating for me. 

And long story short, I ended up pregnant at 14. I had my first child four days after I turned 15. And at that point, their approach was “Okay, here’s your birth control. You’ve done the worst thing possible.” My aunt and uncle are ministers. And then they took a hands off approach because of whatever was so uncomfortable in them.

August (narration):

Babe has done different types of sex work, including survival sex work, the kind that seems like your only option. It comes from a place of extreme need. In Babe’s case, she traded sex for housing. She had dependents and that work kept them all safe. 

Years later, she stepped into what she considers consensual sex work. She was making too much money from other work to qualify for low income housing. And with housing prices skyrocketing where she lived, in Portland, Oregon, she needed a way to pay the bills and provide for her family. This felt more like an empowered choice, she said, opting to market something she’s good at and capitalizing off of her sex appeal.

Babe:  

And that was rewarding, to a point. 

August (narration):

She said the risks and fallout from various things that happened created new trauma. At one point, a returning client took advantage of her, assaulted her and refused to pay her for her work. She didn’t have avenues for support, she said, and that work was no longer feeling sustainable for her and her family.

Then, 2020 rolled around, bringing shutdowns from the pandemic. By then, she had already had an OnlyFans site for a few years. She’d also joined other adult content sites, as a consumer and performer, and had watched numerous of them shut down.

Babe:

So for me 2020 was nothing new, except for all of a sudden, this whorearchy was crumbling. 

August (narration):

Whorearchy is a term many sex workers use to describe a perceived hierarchy of types of sex work. People will look down on “hookers” and porn stars, for example, and consider burlesque dancers respectable artists. And it exists within those industries, too. 

In 2016, strippers started responding in droves to the hashtag #notastripper, which pole dancers were using on social media–as though to say, just because I’m doing this sexy thing doesn’t make me “gross” or “dirty,” like a stripper. 

And in 2020, folks seeking new ways to make money from home started using platforms like OnlyFans. 

Babe:

Girls that dance that would never be associated and didn’t even want to call themselves sex workers, burlesquers who wanted a platform that they could do their stuff and monetize off of it. All these people flooding and wanting to do this thing because their other avenues of income and expression were no longer available to them. 

August (narration):

That brought sex work at large into mainstream culture, Babe said, and raised important awareness.

Babe:

And with that, it gave us a platform to where at least people are aware but it never really started the dialogue on how, at the end of the day, you still see me below you. Because maybe your boyfriend jerks off to me. 

August (narration):

Or maybe you don’t like the way she looks because you don’t have a privileged body – the kind society considers sexy. 

By the time COVID set in, Babe had decided against working in porn and went from working in IT, building systems and databases, to working in the brewing industry. And in April, 2020, nearly her entire team was laid off.

When that happened, she had already started creating content with a couple of production companies, but she hadn’t really embraced, “Yes, I’m going to do this as a career,” for a couple of reasons.

Babe:

I was always being asked, “Well, one, you’re getting up there in age so how long do you think you’re going to do that?’ Two, “what if somebody recognizes you?”

August (narration):

She was working with companies that weren’t part of the adult industry, and stigmas could’ve kept them from thinking her work there was fine and dandy.

But given everything happening in the world and her own inclinations, she started to see things differently.

Babe:  

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to take that step. But finally I’m like Well, you’re already taking the risk. If this is something that you feel you can do, and you’d be happy doing, then why don’t you just do it? 

August (narration):

So she went for it. Entering the adult film industry during a pandemic might not sound very safe, she said, but talent testing and protocols were rigorous, both for STIs and COVID.

As she started flourishing in that work, it helped heal emotional pain she’d been carrying after losing being laid off.

Babe:

I’ve never lost a job before—I was like being broken up with for the first time—and all my self-worth was so tied into my productivity. Not just in income but in the entire culture of being productive for a business, even when you didn’t want to because the bottom line was at stake.

August (narration):

In the sex work she does today, Babe has also grown creatively. And she finds a sense of purpose being selective and writing the stories she wants to see, rather than focusing solely on income.

Babe:  

It’s been a journey. I don’t think that I ever had the opportunity to go, Well, what do I even like?, until I started doing porn.

August (narration):

The beauty of being an independent contractor, she said, is that you get to pick and choose who you work with. And the best experiences involve a lot of communication, familiarity with each other’s work and negotiation. 

She shared an example of an idea she had for a scene, featuring a feminine Dom gal she knows. She approached the performer, who wasn’t comfortable with the specifics of the scene.

Babe:

So we tweaked it to where it’s a cucking scene where they think they’re getting one thing and then their wife walks in and she’s like, “Well actually I arranged all this,” giving her the power and then from there, she’s the boss. 

August (narration):

And those experiences are ideal-

Babe:

-because nobody walks away with something where they don’t feel that they were heard, that their own lived experience isn’t there. And ultimately, it is expression and art. And we get to create stuff that maybe the mass consumer hasn’t seen. 

August (narration):

She’s created Ace porn, for example, which debunks the myths that asexuals never have sex. (In reality, some do – whether that’s masturbation or with a partner – and some don’t.) 

Babe:

And people were like, “Well, asexuals don’t have sex.” And I’m like, “Well, actually, that’s a misnomer. But isn’t it nice to see things where you’re intimate and sensual but there isn’t any sex or obligation?” And the scene ends. 

August (narration):

Did you catch that? Porn without any sex. 

August:

I know you’ve also featured lube in scenes, too, which I love—because it brings light to things that some people have learned are unsexy. 

Babe West:  

Yeah, amplifying other things and normalizing. 

I’m always down for things, like I carry dental dams [chuckles] and all sorts of things. Because I do think it’s awesome to see lubricant used in the middle of a scene, not just edited out, or condoms going on.

August (narration):

This is important, because as Babe pointed, porn is the only sex education many young people have access to. It’s almost never intended for that, and there are some problems with that, but it can still bring some benefits.

Babe:

We can’t always have the ideal education that we want. But we can, as creators, if that’s our wheelhouse, silently, like through action—because they’re watching, they’ll see—show people and demonstrate, and I think that that is its own kind of give back, too. 

August (narration):

Babe finds creating her own adult content empowering emotionally and financially. She’s been able to create passive income streams and start managing debt she was drowning in. Beyond that, she’s been able to invest in creating needed changes in what we see on the screen. Toward that end, she financed her first Shoot House in January.

Babe:

And with that, it’s again another passive income stream, but furthermore, it’s giving me an opportunity to mitigate the things I don’t like about porn, the things I don’t like about interactions with other people, women not being able to advocate for ourselves.

For example, I’m guilty of being in a scene where my body is physically being hurt but I don’t feel like I can call, “Cut!” Or, you know, you need more lube. Those kinds of things like you’d think it wouldn’t happen here. But it does. 

You can’t be mad at the male talent, if you’re not going to advocate for yourself. It’s not the director’s fault. It’s not the camera person’s fault who might see you wince. Like really letting people know that we’re all equal, anybody can call “Cut!” Those things are important. 

And I don’t think that those are things that directors may even think about, especially when they’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and they’re working with newer people. And it’s not things we normalize in general. 

So, I’ve been able to take not just the money I’ve made but the experiences I’ve gathered, and I have a whole network of other sex workers, many more marginalized than myself. And I’m able to bring them to the forefront and have commitments to the people that I work with that your scenes that you create in this house, I’m not going to release for at least six months so that you have more than ample time to market and get it out there in any way you see fit. 

And I think that is important, because people talk about how things need to change but how are you going to do that if you don’t change it yourself. 

So I can’t fix everything, but at least through what I put my time into, I know that I can at least be as open and move through the world mitigating unintentional harm to the best of my ability.

August:

I know this is a huge question, but if you could wave a magic wand and instantly change one thing related to sex work in our culture, what would you change?

Babe West: 

I would end the whorearchy. At the end of the day, people are always gauging where they stand. You know, finding power, right? And once they have a little bit of power, they want to protect it. And that’s how, say, like women that we say, “No swerfs and terfs.” It means no sex worker, exclusionary radical feminists, no trans exclusionary, radical feminist. But what does that mean? 

It means that none of these people are above or lesser than you. And we have to protect all of them. So no whorearchy. I tell people, we’re all whores. You can work on the banks for whomever. You can be in the government, you can be doing social work, you can be a sex worker. Whatever it is, you are taking your time and trading it for something. 

We are all whores here. [laughs] And I say it because it is important. Like, whatever you’re doing, your time is valuable, and who – You are valuable. So whatever you do with your time, go through and have quality interactions where you feel that you’ve given but you’ve also received. 

And in the parameters of sex work, sex is absolutely natural. And if there are things you don’t like to see in pornography, instead of judging the person who’s watching the porn, or the people who create the porn, maybe ask yourself what is it that makes you feel uncomfortable. 

I had to start with massage room porn because of my lived experience in trauma. And anytime I come into a situation where I don’t like what I see in mainstream, I use it as an opportunity to turn it around. 

I think for me, when I was younger, I was just so intimidated, thinking I had to because my only interaction with other adults having sex was watching porn. And I didn’t feel like I fit that bill. Just like I couldn’t fit into the low rise skinny jeans that were all in trend before the days of Beyonce. 

Like, it wasn’t me that I was seeing on that screen, and I tell my fellow fat bodied performers that don’t get mad when your boyfriend hasn’t seen a girl that looks like you. It’s not like mainstream is exalting us. 

Instead, how about you go film you fucking your boyfriend and put it out there for somebody to see? How are you supposed to ever know that you’re normal, if you never ever see somebody doing that?

August (narration):

And when it comes to sex, Babe said, everyone thinks about and has feelings about it, whether we’re engaging it it or not. It’s a part of life.

Babe:

And the more comfortable we can get talking to people in safe spaces and then also doing the work at home in our own hearts, in our own minds, addressing the traumas, the reason why we feel the way we feel about things.  That’s – let’s not even talk about society. That’s going to free you. 

August (narration):

Women and femmes, in particular, she said, feel like they’re not allowed to seek their own pleasure. And that is 100% worth changing, no matter where you are in your journey.

Babe West:  

And like it sounds silly, but like don’t be sad or mad or embarrassed if you spend a day just masturbating or going through a whole variety of pornography, if you’ve never actually sat there and explored it. That’s not bad. It doesn’t make you wrong; it isn’t something to be ashamed of. 

And I liken it to makeup. Everybody’s got to go through their awkward, middle school girl phase wearing makeup where things are too dark before they actually learn how to, how it will work for their complexion, body, etc.

Everybody starts where they start. 

August (narration):

And wherever that is is completely okay. Learn much more about Babe West and explore her work at TheBabeWest.com. 

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