The NY Times article about SeekingArrangements.com, a website that hooks up Sugar Babies with Sugar Mommies and Sugar Daddies, showed up just after I posted my essay “The Business of Sex.” I knew I was going to like the author, Ruth Padawer with the heading: “Heterosexual relationships have long involved economic transactions.” No kidding! She could have added "Homosexual relationships" to the mix.

It brought to mind my original 1972 feminist manifesto titled “Liberating Masturbation” that I turned into Ms. Magazine when I was asked to write an article. The opening sentence stated: “Among the many issues involved in the liberation of women, the two major fronts in my own personal liberation have been economics and sexuality. Ultimately they are not separable – not as long as the female genitals have economic value instead of sexual value for women.” Over the next twenty years, I reworded and rehashed that concept endlessly. It was like I'd been given a Zen koan as I tried to fathom, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" My rational mind knew that personally speaking; I had to earn my own money in order to be sexually independent. Whenever I was financially dependent on a lover or my husband, I was unable to speak the whole truth about my sexual desires or share my sexual thoughts.

 At the time feminism was all over equal pay for equal work but when it came to sex, the focus was on birth control, abortion and sexual violence against women. Sexual pleasure was about love, romance, marriage and monogamy! I’d embraced that life style and as an artist, I didn’t want the limitations it imposed. After my first one woman art exhibition at thirty-nine, I realized I couldn't make a living selling fine art so I began teaching, lecturing and writing articles. In '74, I
self-published my own book, "Liberating Masturbation" which became a
feminist classic. Although this might sound like an artists idealism, earning my own money allowed me to explore America's sexual revolution of the seventies without answering to anyone but myself.

Today I believe a person who exchanges sex for money has made a legitimate career choice. I have nothing against a woman (or man) who chooses to be a wife, a mistress, a prostitute or has a patron. To one degree or other, all women are sex workers. I consider myself a sex worker with years of running workshops and now Sex Coaching. I’d like to see courses that teach young people how to prepare for different sex professions. Looks like our website, dodsonandross will soon be doing just that with our new Sexual Skills Series coming soon.

Our society is stuck in a sickly denial of the importance of sexual expression. Until we can honor all of our sex workers which include prostitutes, sex therapists, researchers, wives, porn stars, scientists, mistresses, performance artists, Tantra teachers, sex educators, etc, we deny the life force that is the creative energy. Websites like SeekingArangments simply facilitates those young women and men looking for a temporary patron. I’d join the site and add to the 1% of Sugar Mommies, but right now, I’m financially tapped out. I’ll let you know when that changes and then I'll create my own profile.