My Sexuality Is Not My Personality.

There are a lot of things I do that seem like they are part of the stereotype and social role of being a woman. There are a lot of things I do that seem like adherence to the domestic responsibility that is disproportionately placed on women. I wash my husband's clothes. I make our bed and clean our room. I polish his shoes and ensure his uniforms are clean and ready for him. I organise his life for him, I buy the things he needs to function everyday like shaving foam and new shoelaces. I make myself pretty for him; I do my nails, I shave my legs, I put on clothes I have no business owning. None of it is actually in keeping with what I was taught to be as a woman (nor is it about that), because I was raised to focus solely on having a career that allowed me to hire enough help to maintain the house I lived in. 

I grew up in that kind of household. My sister and I were raised by our nanny. The food was prepared by the cook. The house was cleaned by people my parents employed and honestly, as shameful as this seems now, I don't think I ever actually cleaned my bedroom when I was growing up. When I came back from school, it was already done, and I never questioned it. I have no memories of ever folding my clothes, and no idea of the process that led to them leaving my room dirty and returning clean and in my closet. I was never required to pick up my toys or even keep track of my own books. We were driven around by the driver my mom hired to drive us around. I was also a shocking age when I realised, actually realised, that cars don't just wash themselves. Any difficulty we had at school was dealt with by tutors who came home to teach us. When I was a child, a young one, I didn't know this was not normal. I heard my parents complain about money, I heard them say things about not having enough, and it wasn't until much later that I realised that the definition of "not enough" changes based on what you make. To this day, my parents think they are not wealthy in any way. I don't begrudge them their success, especially since my father accumulated it by working extremely hard from a very young age and making his way to success, but I wish they would realise that it has been many, many decades since they've "struggled" with money in any way and it has changed their reality. 

They don't believe they spoilt us in any way, and no matter what I say I cannot get them to see it, and honestly I cannot be much more accusatory about this because it as part of this "spoiling" I got privileges I could have just as easily not had. I am a function of some of those privileges in many ways, and that even extends to my ability to have outrageous dreams and ambitious goals. I was given things, so I have the security of someone who knows they can get things. However, I was always worried about the life I was living with my parents. I was worried because once I was old enough I also saw how the money was a mire in which you were trapped. You got everything you wanted in the world, but you had to be what they wanted you to be. I had to be a thin investment banker who had two kids between 28 and 32, but never leave my job for a second. I had to be socially proper and beautiful, and host garden parties. I had to engage in social theatre and marry appropriately. I had bury resentment, anger and trauma, and learn to be the perfect happy elegant woman on the outside. It's just not important that you were raped this morning, not if you have to host a cocktail party in the evening. I couldn't do any of this. 

I couldn't. 

I wanted to be a prostitute. 

There were many things I knew I wanted to do with my life but prostitution (or sex work, if you prefer that term) was the first one on the list for a long time. I don't know exactly why but I saw it as the most honest thing I could do. I knew that to live my life I had to leave my parents' world. I don't deserve any applause for this because even though I rejected my parents' money very early in life, I still enjoy, even today, the privileges that come with the life I was afforded by them when I was growing up, and this is uncomfortable but true, I also enjoy the security of knowing my parents have accumulated wealth they can pass on. I don't want their money but that's not the point, it is mine for the taking if I do, and that changes how you view the world, and I cannot lie about that. Minimising the advantages I have been given in this life isn't honorable, and even though admitting it is uncomfortable, and even makes me feel bad about myself, I cannot pretend to be as noble as I would like to be. 

A part of why I divorced my roots as much as I could was because I wanted to live a life no one was going to approve of and sex-work was only one part of it. The other part was my sexuality. I wanted some things that were scandalous, and that was even okay, it was even okay that I desired pain, but it was never going to be okay that I wanted to be a servant. I use that term in a purely sexual context, I didn't want to do that as a job, and I cannot even begin to parse through the problematic elements of growing up knowing you can hire people go serve you in every way, and not have to think about their lives past that. That's not what I mean. I was never taught to do things. I was never taught to cook, clean, repair anything, work a washing machine, clean a toilet, wash a car, water a lawn. Nothing. There were no chores in my life, but my sexuality seemed to want me to be the person who does those chores for someone else. That's a huge part of why I learnt to do things. The first thing I did after I left my parents home was to find the most terrible house I could and teach myself to do everything in it. I learnt to cook somewhat while still a teenager but everything else, from plumbing to realising you need to buy dishes if you want to eat from them (and I didn't for like, two months), I taught myself to do because I realised I was a useless creature in this world. I was not a capable woman. I had to become one. If I couldn't work, support myself, clean my house, fix my drain, dispute a bill, wash dishes and dress myself in clean clothes, I couldn't be a capable woman. I don't think that is the definition of a capable woman in general, nor should it be, nor should there be a need for a set definition, but it's the way I see myself. 

I had to be a capable woman to be worthwhile servant. I wanted to be that. I wanted to be that and maybe I wouldn't even have wanted it if I didn't have the upbringing I do. I cannot say that the deep guilt of having been served by people in my life in ways that I should have been doing myself is without its guilt, but the only way I know to atone for that guilt is to be that person to someone else. It doesn't mean I don't respect the things someone does in that position, on the contrary, I don't think I learnt to respect even myself until I became capable of scrubbing a toilet and washing a dish. I just don't feel comfortable with the fact that I had, and have, the option of never having to do those things. In that way my sexuality is informed by my social experience of the world, and my personality is informed by my sexuality. Without the feedback from my sexuality, I wonder if I would have ever taught myself to be a functional adult. 

But I did. 

And now, I do things for my husband that many women around me are just expected to do, and that has its own problems. The truth is that as much as I believe in choice being the path to empowerment, I worry about representation, and I don't even mean representation to society at large, I mean in my own house (and community). I am a woman and I am aware of the domestic responsibility women face around me. For me, it may be a sexual indulgence, but I live with a man and a male child, and I cannot afford to teach them the wrong things. I know that women are often treated like servants in their own homes in our country, and in many cases failure to comply leads to violence, and I am in a position where I can ensure I do not allow that message to be sent by me. In this way, my sexuality is at odds with what I believe. I can scrub toilets as much as I want because it makes me wet, but if my stepson sees scrubbing the toilet as my responsibility without all the information (which he cannot understand yet), it doesn't matter how hot I get from domestic servitude, I will have sent him a clear message from my actions alone. If I do everything in the house because I want to play master and servant, he will learn that it's my responsibility to do everything. I cannot do that. I have to think about that and realise that my sexuality is not actually my personality. 

It's not. 

My sexuality, especially this part of it, is a private thing, and while I am a huge proponent of "just be honest" I will keep this part of my relationship with my partner private unless I can truly and completely explain it. Especially, to our child. That's just how it has to be. I can enjoy the servility of making our bed, but he has to see my partner clean the kitchen, and he himself has to make his bed. I may want to because I would love to embody the role that makes me wet as thoroughly as was once possible, but I cannot, because I cannot send that message. I can polish my husband's shoes, but he has to see my husband do such things for me too. He has to know it's not the job of a woman, but service as an act of love. There has to be a line inside your house that your sexuality doesn't cross, and I don't mean this is the line for everyone, I am sure it varies based on the nature of your beliefs and relationships, but this is the line for me. My sexuality gets to dictate some of the paths I take in life, but it doesn't get to dictate who I am on those paths. My poltics get to influence my sexuality but they don't get to define it. My life experience gets to shape my decision-making and the things I find hot, but it doesn't get to excuse them, only explain them. 

Sexuality is complex and deep, but it cannot be the entirety of who I am.