An idea that may illustrate our different perspectives is differentiating levels of value alignment in a friendship vs an intimate relationship. I have a gym buddy whose political views are more conservative than mine. However, within the context of our friendship, which is working out, eating together, and grabbing the occasional drink, our political views do not affect the functioning of our friendship. Therefore, the reason I mentioned my friendships with other sex workers is to describe the different levels of value alignment and the extent to which intimate partners in a relationship need to agree on each party’s fundamental principles.

For me, one of those fundamental principles is the value of intimacy. If we look toward the future, as you suggested, I think it’s naïve to consider that the past has zero influence on our outlook. Would you be accepting of someone who cheated on a previous significant other? Would you be comfortable trusting that person will be monogamous despite any future circumstances? The extent to which you determine the capacity for change is an individual evaluation.

To correlate this to the current case of sex work, my values are such that I would never consider trading my intimacy for financial gain, either paying for sex or receiving payment for sex. But if someone has already done that before, the odds of them doing it again are higher than someone who has never made a financial-sexual exchange based on their values. So, I might err on the side of caution, and you might believe more in the ability of an individual to change.

Eventually, this discussion comes down to the prioritization of values and how important they are to the individual, which is the essence of the original piece. For some intimate partners, they must 100% align on political views. For others, monogamy. For me, intimacy. And to even take a more benign case, whether you prefer a cat or a dog might be of critical importance. Whatever values are essential must be of massive personal consideration because you’re trying to find a long-term partner and create a successful relationship. Conflict is unavoidable, but conflict on life values would be detrimental.

So, you propose deal-breakers, with all of which I agree. But I would assume there are other deal-breakers for you that wouldn’t hold the same weight for me, things that I could overlook but would be critical to you.

Moving to the point about sex workers as mothers, in no way was I trying to imply that a sex worker would be a bad mother, and I am not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. I am talking about the example a mother sets for her child which is independent of her ability to be a mother.

The point that I was trying to make is that you characterize a good mother as a role model. Now, I don’t want to make assumptions, but I feel as though you haven’t actually talked to anyone in the sex work industry, or maybe it’s a small sample size. As you stated, the work is difficult and dangerous. It can also be gratifying; in some cases, they work with adult virgins and provide an incredibly valuable service. But predominantly, based on the experiences of people I know, it can be, as you said, difficult and dangerous, but extremely degrading, culturally toxic, working with awful clients, etc. This pertains to illegal sex work; I can imagine it is different where sex work is legal, like in Nevada or Australia.

Stating that a mother might not want her daughter to be a sex worker is, in my opinion, highly unrepresentative of reality. My dad is an immigrant to Canada, still can’t speak English very well, and didn’t finish high school, so his employment opportunities were limited. He worked in general labour, often working multiple jobs to support the family. Like your mom doing her MBA, they both hustled to provide a better future for us. From my dad’s perspective, if he worked his ass off to give me a better life, and I ended up in general labour, he would think less of me. Nothing against anyone who does general labour, but relative to the maximum human potential my dad worked to provide for me, general labour would be a massive underachievement.

I know the same is true for my sex worker friends. Some enjoy their job, some are using it to pay for school, some hate it. But there seems to be a consensus if, given a chance to choose for their daughter, they would not be okay with their baby following in their path. They would still love their daughter because they’re family. I don’t know about thinking less of their daughter. But I simply cannot imagine how they might not want them to pursue sex work.

To directly answer the self-reflective questions: a) Yes, the anger came from me telling her how I felt about sex work and her not feeling the need to disclose her involvement; b) No, I’ll admit that my assumptions came from an unreliable source; c) No, I wasn’t looking for an exit, and I never mentioned anything about alcohol so I don’t know how to answer the second part.